My Florida Backyard

New Attitude

2012-01-29T18:50:00.001-05:00

As a follow-up to our last post about the National Wildlife Federation's disappointing partnership with the Scotts MiracleGro corporation... National Wildlife Federation and Scott's MiracleGro issued this joint statement today:

So, you might be wondering... what exactly is this pending legal settlement that's causing such problems? Why, nothing more than the discovery that from 2005 through 2008, Scotts sold 73 million units of birdseed coated in pesticides that was toxic to birds. Even after being told by its own scientists that the birdseed was likely causing damage to birds along with fish and other wildife, Scotts continued to sell it (the pesticide was meant to keep insects from eating the birdseed while in storage). And as of Friday, Scotts pled guilty to this in federal court and agreed to pay millions of dollars in fines. (Learn more here.)

Up until now, I'd been willing to say that I could understand why NWF decided to partner with Scotts, even if I didn't support the decision. After all, it takes a lot of money to support the kinds of really good programs that NWF has (and they really do have some good programs), and a corporate partnership with oodles of money could be very tempting. But the more I think about it, the angrier I get. Because there's no way that at least some of the folks at NWF didn't know about this lawsuit in advance, and yet they had the gall to make their partnership announcement just days before the settlement took place. NWF agreed to make a deal with the devil, and they wound up with major egg on their face.

In my book, NWF has a of work to do to regain my trust before I'll be trusting them with my donated money again. And as for Scotts? I've purchased the very occasional MiracleGro and other Scotts products in the past, but you can bet that I won't in the future. Over and over again I learn the message... it's better to spend a little more money to deal with smaller companies who truly have an interest in protecting the environment. The fastest way consumers can send a message is with their pocketbooks.

OK, enough of the soapbox. Back to all the good things that happen in My Florida Backyard - we're still spotting lots of monarch and sulphur butterflies, but no red admirals or buckeyes yet. Has anyone seen these spring species flying in Central Florida yet? Let us know!

Sometimes They Disappoint You

2012-01-24T22:48:00.000-05:00

We generally avoid political type issues on My Florida Backyard, but a recent news story caught our eye because it involves the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). My Florida Backyard has always been proud of being an NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat; our whole gardening philosophy has always been based on it. So we were disappointed to learn that NWF has announced a partnership with Scott's MiracleGro, the mega-company that manufactures the most commonly used chemical pesticides and fertilizers in the country.

Wildlife habitats have always been about putting the needs of wildlife above the convenience of humans. Broad application of fertilizers may keep the lawn green and the flowers constantly blooming, but the runoff of phosphates into waterways causes major pollution. Ants and other garden pests can be irritating, but overuse of pesticides throws off the balance of nature, killing all insects without regard for their place in the ecosystem.While we use the very occasional dose of MiracleGro or other fertilizers here and there in the gardens, we have a much higher focus on using the right plants in the right place and adding compost to enrich the soil. As for chemical pesticides? They don't have a place for us.

Here's the interesting thing, though. The reason we started eliminating chemical pesticides and fertilizers from our habitat was at the advice of NWF. When certifying our habitat through NWF, we had to meet five criteria, which we documented on the Our NWF Wildlife Habitat page right here on this blog. The first four were "Provide Food", "Provide Water", "Provide Cover", and "Provide Shelter to Raise Young". The fifth requirement was "Sustainable Gardening Practices", and included the following (among other items):

Organic Practices: Eliminate Chemical Pesticides • Eliminate Chemical Fertilizers • Compost

I just visited the NWF Certified Habitat page and guess what? The fifth requirement of "Sustainable Gardening Practices" IS NO LONGER THERE. I just cannot believe this is a coincidence. An organization cannot partner with the largest producer of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and also advise against the use of them.

While a corporate partnership doesn't have to be bad thing for a non-profit organization, and I don't like to jump to conclusions, NWF has left me little option here. I can only believe that this corporate partnership will result in the watering-down of NWF's political stands and the actions they take. As long as NWF chooses to pursue this partnership and make overt changes to their recommendations as a consequence, I cannot in good conscience endorse their organization. Like many wildlife bloggers, I'll be making changes to that portion of this blog soon. It won't affect how the blog runs, of course, but National Wildlife Federation's Certified Wildlife Habitat will no longer be the model we use in My Florida Backyard.

That's all for the politics, folks. We now return you to regularly-scheduled Florida wildlife-watching.

Littlest Things

2012-01-23T21:20:00.000-05:00

It's hard to tell size from the picture below, but we recently discovered The Littlest Monarch in My Florida Backyard. We found it a few evenings ago, obviously just emerged from chrysalis (you can see it in the bottom right corner of the picture in the background), drying its wings and getting ready to fly. It was at least one-third smaller than an average monarch butterfly, more the size of a buckeye or white peacock.

There could be a few reasons for the small size of this monarch. Most likely is the limited food supply this time of year. Though we have some milkweed in the garden for monarch caterpillars to eat, the dry and cool season has limited its growth. This gives the caterpillar less to eat, causing them to be smaller overall when they enter chrysalis. Butterflies are fully-grown when they emerge, and this one will not grow or change size during the few weeks of its life, but as long as it has the ability to fly, eat, and mate (which this one seems to), it should do just fine.

Winter is a time to savor every bit of wildlife in My Florida Backyard, no matter the size. We feel fortunate to have butterflies of any size in My Florida Backyard in January, especially when snowstorms rage up north!

There Grew a Little Flower

2012-01-17T20:21:00.000-05:00

We realized we've been terribly neglectful of the blog thus far in 2012. We blame this on a combination of a light freeze plus a long dry spell that has made the gardens pretty uninteresting AND winter colds that have kept us confined to couches with tissues and cough drops. The yard has been pretty neglected, and we admit to making absolutely no progress on those 2012 resolutions - we've done no new planting and our backyard is still haunted by stray cats, keeping birds from the feeders and the new bird bath.

Fortunately, life in the great outdoors continues even when you ignore it, and we noticed this weekend that there are dozens of teeny tiny zinnia flowers coming up from seed all around the yard. They are incredibly small (about the size of a nickel at most), most likely from lack of rain or any supplemental watering. Still, they're awfully cute, so we thought we'd share them with you in lieu of anything more exciting.

Here's hoping your 2012 has been a little better than ours so far. We're looking forward to trading the tissues for gardening gloves and getting out to do some garden rehab some weekend soon. Have you been up to anything good in your garden? Tell us about in the comments and give us some inspiration!

Shake It Out

2012-01-07T23:00:00.000-05:00

Anhingas are common visitors to My Florida Backyard. As we've noted before, anhingas fish underwater with almost their entire body submerged. When they surface and wish to fly, they must first dry their wings. Unlike ducks, they do not have oils on their wings to make the feathers waterproof. So they are often found perched along the edge of waterways, wings spread to the sun.

This evening, though, an anhinga that was fishing in the pond left the "drying in the sun" part until a little too late. The sun had already set, and the evening had grown very still. With no sun or wind to help her out, this anhinga had no choice but to shake her wings dry, occasionally giving her head and neck a good shimmy as well (rather like a dog).

She shook her wings pretty steadily for almost 10 minutes, finally taking off as the nearly full moon rose behind her. All living beings have to know how to improvise sometimes!

It's a New Year

2012-01-01T19:34:00.000-05:00

2012 is here! The holiday season kept us busy, and the new year was here before we knew it. We did find some time to put up our favorite Christmas gift in the garden - this butterfly-shaped bird bath sent all the way from Ohio (once again, thanks, Dad!).

We haven't had any bird visitors yet, possibly because our yard is suddenly full of stray neighborhood cats. And that brings us to the matter of...

My Florida Backyard 2012 Resolutions:

Figure out how to deal with the stray cats. We're cat lovers here in My Florida Backyard, but ours never get any closer to the great outdoors than watching it somewhat wistfully through the screens of the back porch. These stray cats (we've counted four different ones at least) like to lay around in the gardens in the sun, keeping birds from the feeders and the new bird bath. Any suggestions?
You wouldn't think there'd be room for any more plants in our gardens, but there are a few we're determined to track down and add this year anyway:

Carolina Jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens)
Trumpet Vine (Campsis radicans)
Oakleaf Hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia)

Plant around the mailbox. We've just let the grass take over around our mailbox area, but this is a great place for sun-loving, drought-tolerant plants. This year, we want to find some easy-care plants to put there, and landscape it more attractively.

So that's what we're planning for 2012 in My Florida Backyard. What about you? Have you made any resolutions for your gardens in 2012? We'd love to hear about them. Happy New Year!

Do You See What I See?

2011-12-23T17:35:00.000-05:00

How many birds do you see in this picture? We see 9, with 4 different species represented...

... 3 limpkins, 2 mallards, 2 muscovy ducs, and 2 ibises. Did we miss any?

Open Up

2011-12-18T20:27:00.000-05:00

'Tis the season for amaryllis bulbs! They're incredibly popular (if misnamed - they're really hippeastrum) at Christmas, since these bulbs are prepped by the growers so they will begin to bloom just a few weeks after the recipient receives them. We bought a new one around Thanksgiving - Hippeastrum papilio, Butterfly Amaryllis. It started sending up a flower stalk almost immediately after being planted, and started to open this weekend.

We watched it eagerly, waiting for the spectacular blooms to appear. This hippeastrum is very popular because of its unusual coloration, a lime green color shot through with deep red. And the bloom doesn't disappoint. In fact, even thought its not quite done opening, we just couldn't wait to share it with you.

The bulb is already sending up a second flower stalk, and beginning to produce leaves as well. When it's done flowering, we'll probably move it outside to a partly shaded spot and let it return to its natural blooming cycle. In this climate, hippeastrum tends to bloom in late February or early March, so it will probably be about 14 months before we see the bloom again.

We think it will be worth the wait. Hippeastrum bulbs can be expensive - this one was $15 - but they're truly investments if you care for them properly. In a few years, this bulb will begin to produce baby offshoots, and over time we may have dozens of these beauties in My Florida Backyard. That's worth the money, in our eyes!

Mouths to Feed

2011-12-10T21:23:00.000-05:00

Summer is a slow time at the bird feeders in My Florida Backyard. Many birds change their diets in the summer to focus on the insects that are available in abundance; insects offer high amounts of protein and that's what nesting birds and juveniles need in the summer. When cooler weather arrives, insects are a little more sparse (not that it necessarily feels that way on a mosquito-filled evening) and some birds will drop by feeders for seeds instead. We have two common feeder visitors in My Florida Backyard - northern cardinals and tufted titmice, like the ones shown below.

The titmice are especially fun to watch, as they crack each seed delicately, holding it between their feet and using their beaks to get at the goodness inside. Experiments have shown that titmice will make an especial effort to select the largest seed available, and are also known to take cracked seeds off to store in a separate location for later.

Tufted titmice always seem especially colorful in the fall, most likely because they have one yearly molt sometime in August and are still flaunting their rust-colored and clean white breast feathers. Many birds have a spring molt to prepare for mating and nesting season, but tufted titmice do not.

We'd like to attract some additional feeder birds to My Florida Backyard, but haven't had much luck except for the aforementioned cardinals, mourning doves (in droves), and the occasional woodpecker (though never at the suet feeder - that seems to go untouched). Do you live in Central Florida and have any feeder tips for us? We'd love to know if anyone has any luck drawing finches with a thistle feeder when they're down here for the winter, or any other advice you can offer!

Natural Blues

2011-12-04T18:53:00.000-05:00

As you may know, we can't really get enough salvia in My Florida Backyard. We love discovering a new species to add to the collection, so when we found Bi-color Sage (Salvia sinaloensis) a few months ago, we knew we needed it. We bought two and planted them, but before we could get any pictures, they stopped blooming. Last week's rain seems to have brought them back, though, and flower spikes have started to appear again.

This salvia is native to Mexico, as indicated by the botanical name - sinaloensis refers to the Sinaloa district of Mexico where the plant was first identified. The common name refers to the two colors of the blooms, blue with white centers.

The blooms spikes are gorgeous, but the foliage has a lot going for it too. It forms a nice low-growing mat of green and bronze leaves, making great ground-cover. Bicolor sage can be grown in full sun to part shade, and is said to be hardy all the way down to zero degrees, so we expect it to do quite well here even if we have a frost or two.

Nearly all salvias are wonderful in the butterfly garden as nectar plants (with Salvia splendens being a notable exception), so we can never have too much. Easy to grow, easy to love... those are the kinds of plants we love in My Florida Backyard!

We Gather Together

2011-11-24T18:43:00.000-05:00

Here in My Florida Backyard, holidays are generally pretty quiet affairs. Our families live many hundreds of miles away, so it's usually just us enjoying our holiday meal out on the back porch. Of course, plenty of wildlife is also around, feasting as well.

Who joined in your Thanksgiving feast? We hope it was as nice as ours was. Happy Thanksgiving!

Mexico Came Here

2011-11-18T19:52:00.001-05:00

Fall in Florida is the season of purples. Asters, muhly, beautyberry - so many of fall's fantastic showstoppers here are purple. Another great example is Mexican Sage (Salvia leucantha), which begins blooming in early fall and lasts until first frost.

Though not native to Florida (it hails from Central American and Mexico), Mexican Sage is well-suited to our climate and shows no invasive tendencies. It has silvery green foliage that grows into almost shrub-like proportions by the end of summer (3 feet high and tall), when the flower stalks emerge and add another foot or so to the height. (Ours are still small - we planted them only a month or so ago when we got a great deal on the clearance rack at Lowe's.)

The stalks and calyxes are purple and fuzzy, while the blooms themselves are a soft white color. This late-bloomer is a favorite of pollinators like bees and butterflies, and is very easy to maintain. After the first flush of blooms has finished, cut back to the base (you'll see the new growth beneath) for continued blooming as long as the season permits.

Mexican Sage will likely die back to the ground if we have a hard frost, but will re-grow quickly once warmer weather arrives. We always love adding new salvia species to the butterfly garden in My Florida Backyard - especially those that add to the purple pageant of autumn!

Back Porch

2011-11-12T20:37:00.000-05:00

Our screened-in back porch is probably our favorite part of the house here in My Florida Backyard. It gives us a place to sit and watch the wildlife world go by without being eaten alive by mosquitoes or drowned in the rain. In turn, the outside of the screen gives wildlife a place to hang out - lizards spend time there warming up in the sun, squirrels race across it on their way from one feeder to another, and insects rest there before heading back out into the world, like this furry brown moth we found the other day:

The world is full of PBMs - "plain brown moths", most of which are extremely difficult to identify, but the fun furry legs on this one led us to try anyway. We started at DiscoverLife.org's Moth ID guide, which allows lets you check boxes and narrow down your options, but we still got too many possibilities. We tried some Google searches for things like "furry brown moth", but again - no luck. In the end, we found it by dumb luck while browsing brown moth images. It's a Florida Fern Moth (Callopistria floridensis), whose caterpillars feed on many kinds of ferns, and its native to Florida and the tropics.

Small discoveries like this aren't exciting to everyone, but they make days in My Florida Backyard a little more fun for us. Time spent on our back porch is never time wasted!

Mellow Yellow

2011-11-06T22:30:00.004-05:00

Fall is the time of purple and gold in My Florida Backyard, and one of the brightest patches of yellow comes from the Winter Cassia (Cassia bicapsularis syn. Senna bicapsularis). This shrub provides a bright burst of color from now through the first frost with its unusual flowers, but that's not the only way it provides gold in the garden. You see, cassia species are host plants for sulphur caterpillars of several varieties. Normally, these caterpillars are the same green shade as the leaves they eat. But when the flowering season arrives, the caterpillars immediately begin to dine on this delicacy, and as a result - they turn bright yellow.

The species above is an Orange-Barred Sulphur caterpillar, but Cloudless Sulphur butterflies (shown below) will lay on cassia as well, along with the smaller Sleepy Orange. They generally lay far more eggs than will ever hatch - Winter Cassia is extremely attractive to ants, and while harvesting nectar the ants will also gobble up any sulphur eggs along the way. Fortunately, sulphur butterflies seem to haunt these bushes, laying eggs from spring to first frost, so their continued success is pretty well-assured.

It should be noted that some organizations place Cassia bicapsularis on invasive species lists, but other groups, like the University of Florida Extension, are not concerned and in fact continue to recommend this bush for planting. To add to the mess, C. bicapsularis is sometimes confused with Senna pendula, a similar and possibly more invasive species. You can use your own judgment on whether to include this non-native in your own landscape, but in My Florida Backyard, we feel comfortable enough with this plant to enjoy the incredible benefits it brings to the butterfly garden, including the bright yellow caterpillars of fall.

P.S. Nov. 7: A quick update - here's a good article from FloridaGardener.com with more info about the differences between C. bicapsularis and S. pendula.

Have a Feast Here Tonight

2011-11-02T16:51:00.000-04:00

Regular readers may remember that back in the spring, we installed a "squirrel feeder" in My Florida Backyard. This cleverly designed feeder looks like a corn stalk, and you just add dried corn on the cob to the stakes. Well, as much as we liked it, the squirrels spent the summer ignoring it, and we were getting ready to chalk it up to another "oh, well, we tried" situation.

But then a few weeks ago, the squirrels seemed to suddenly realize this feast of plenty of was free for the taking, and they quickly began to strip the cobs of the tasty little kernels. One squirrel loves to perch atop the fence nearby as he nibbles his dinner, while this little guy prefers to use the corncobs themselves for his seat (sorry for the poor image quality - we snapped this through the window so as not to scare him off):

It's nice to know this fun feeder is finally working out. Most likely, the squirrels spent the summer feasting on insects that were readily available, and as those populations began to dwindle, they looked around for easier food sources. While this doesn't necessarily keep them off the bird feeders nearby when there's sunflower seed to be had, it does at least provide ridiculously cute photo opportunities as they enjoy their tasty corn snacks in My Florida Backyard.

Purple and Gold

2011-10-27T18:58:00.001-04:00

Northern autumns mean colored leaves blazing the hillsides. Here in Florida, autumn comes in with plenty of color too, and the height of it is just beginning. My Florida Backyard is full of the purples and golds right now that make a Florida autumn special.

The muhly grass (oh, the muhly grass!) is at its peak right now. We write about it every year, because we wait for it and love it just as much every year. What an amazing native grass!

The Winter Cassia (Cassia bicapsularis) is beginning to bloom too. After spending the summer being visited by bright yellow sulphur butterflies to lay eggs, the cassia seems to takes its inspiration from them, putting forth gorgeous gold flowers that will turn the caterpillars a brilliant yellow as the fall progresses.

There are plenty of other fall colors around the yard (Beautyberry and Carolina aster to name a few), but they'll have to wait for another post, because the purple and gold of the muhly and the cassia are all we really seem to need today.

Don't Be Shy

2011-10-20T22:48:00.000-04:00

Here in My Florida Backyard, we're lucky to live on a stormwater drainage pond, part of a huge stormwater management system designed to prevent flooding and filter out contaminants before they can drain into the groundwater. This pond also adds a wetland aspect to our environment, bringing in wading birds, alligators, and water-loving plants we wouldn't have otherwise. We love to check out the shoreline for new sightings, like this cute little wildflower we found the other day.

We pulled out our Wildflowers of Florida Field Guide and found it on the first page of the "yellow flowers" section. It's Shyleaf (Aeschynomene americana), a native plant found in wetlands throughout Florida. It grows about 2 feet by 2 feet, in a rather feathery fashion that reminds us of Partridge Pea.

In fact, both Partridge Pea and Shyleaf are in the Pea Family (Fabaceae), as you can pretty easily tell by looking at the flowers, and by the fact that it spreads by seeds from pods. It prefers moist soil, so it's often found along the edge of lakes and rivers. As you might have guessed from the name, Shyleaf folds up its leaves when touched, and it's a host plant for the Barred Yellow (Eurema daira) butterfly, a fairly small pale yellow butterfly with a green caterpillar.

It's always fun to find a new plant in and around My Florida Backyard, and when it's a native wildflower, that's even better. When you keep your eyes open, you never know what you might find!

Flowers are Red

2011-10-15T10:00:00.001-04:00

As we work to rehab the gardens after the long humid days of summer, we've been adding new plants here and there. One of our new additions to the butterfly garden is a small shrub called Peregrina, or Spicy Jatropha (Jatropha integerrima). It has interestingly-shaped shiny green leaves and delicate small red flowers that butterflies love.

Though small now, this shrub has the ability to grow up 10 feet tall. We'll probably keep it trimmed to 3 - 4 feet, encouraging it to grow wider instead of taller. Spicy Jatropha is native to Cuba and Hispaniola, and is sensitive to hard freezes, though it will re-grow even if killed to the ground. We will most likely cover it if any especially cold weather threatens.

This is a popular plant with butterflies, especially zebra longwings. The little flowers are less than an inch across, but very beautiful up close. All parts of this plant are toxic, so don't plant if you have dogs that like to chew on your shrubbery, and be careful when pruning as those with sensitive skin can have reactions to the milky sap.

Though we try to focus on native plants in My Florida Backyard, some carefully chosen non-natives are fine in any garden. This plant doesn't really show any signs of being invasive in Central Florida, so we can plant and enjoy it in good conscience!

Georgia on My Mind

2011-10-13T07:00:00.001-04:00

Last spring, we bought a neat little native wildflower from Wilcox Nursery over in Largo. We were intrigued by the yummy minty smell at the time, and the promise of hordes of tiny flowers in the fall. Well, fall has arrived, and the Georgia Calamint (Calamintha georgiana) has delivered the promised buds and blooms, the sheer number of which are hard to appreciate in this photograph.

Up close, the flowers resemble those of Florida Pennyroyal (Piloblepis rigida), another native member of the Mint family (Lamiaceae). The flavor and smell of mint from the foliage has a bit of savory spice to it, which is most likely why its other common name is Georgia Basil. Some write of using this plant as seasoning or for teas.

Our plant is fairly small still, though it's said to grow 2 feet high by 3 feet wide. This species is actually not really found in the wild this far south, though it's common a little further north, including (as you might guess) Georgia. Here in Florida, it's only found in a few counties in the extreme north. It does well here, though, and apparently can be propagated by cuttings if they're kept sufficiently moist.

Though this small plant hasn't put on a whole lot of new growth in the last six months, it seems to have established itself well. It's said to be deciduous, so the small needle-leaves will apparently fall off during the winter. In the meantime, we're in peak flowering season, which will last a couple of weeks. Bees, small butterflies, and tiny nectar-seeking ants seem to be loving it, and so are we.

Sneak Peak

2011-10-11T21:23:00.000-04:00

Fall colors and new plants are starting to arrive in My Florida Backyard, and we've got a bunch of good posts coming up... .just as soon as we have to time to write them. In the meantime, here's a little sneak peak at a couple of fall favorites who seemed ready for their close-ups. Can you ID them?

'Tis Autumn

2011-10-06T20:08:00.000-04:00

At last, fall weather has arrived. The days are still plenty warm, but the nights are generally cooler, and good breezes have made working outdoors pleasant again. We spent the weekend cleaning up the backyard and putting in a few new plants. We love to hit the markdown rack at the Lowe's garden center, where perfectly good plants that just need some love are often available at a bargain. This week, we found some Mexican Sage that just needed to be cut back and watered well (more on that in another post) along with some wonderful Anise Hyssop plants.

Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) isn't a true hyssop but, like the Agastache rupestris we planted last spring, it's a member of the mint family (Lamiaceae). The tiny flowers attract bees and butterflies by the dozens, and humans enjoy the licorice scent of the foliage.

Anise Hyssop is native to the northern part of the U.S. and Canada. That makes it perfect for growing in Florida in the cooler months. If we cover it from hard freezes, we should have it right through spring. It likes sunny spots for best flowering, and will need a little supplemental watering during the driest spells. Cutting back the flower stalks after they bloom will help encourage further flowers. Northern growers note that this plant re-seeds prolifically, but I don't expect that to be too much of a problem here, as it is unlikely to survive the hot wet summers.

At the butterfly garden where I work, Anise Hyssop is one of the biggest draws for butterflies. Here in My Florida Backyard, we were especially pleased to get these plants because they were marked down to half-price ($5 each for plants in 2.25 gallon pots) even though they seemed to be in perfect condition. They were a fantastic bargain and are helping to replenish the butterfly garden as we head into the wonderful months ahead.

Big Bird

2011-10-02T20:29:00.000-04:00

We welcomed the first cool weekend of the fall with a lot of yard work and a surprise visitor. As we sat on the bench in the backyard planning what we wanted to accomplish, a flash of red in the nearby pine trees caught our eye. A loud hammering sound quickly clued us in to the woodpecker nearby, but we were surprised to find it was a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), which we've never had the pleasure of seeing around the yard before.

Pileated woodpeckers are the largest woodpeckers in Florida, and get their name from their red cap of feathers. In Latin, pileatus meant "wearing a felt skullcap" (seems sort of an oddly specific word, when you think about it). Incidentally, in case you've ever had trouble pronouncing the word, the preferred pronunciation is "pie-lee-ate-ed", although "pill-ee-ate-ed" is also fine. In both pronunciations, the accent is on the first syllable.

Male and female Pileated woodpeckers can be differentiated by the head. Males have an extra splash of red below the eye (click here to see). Our visitor was lacking that patch, so she was a female. Both forage for food in the same way, by excavating rectangular holes in the bark of trees to find ants and small insects. They make holes so large that other birds come to feed there as well.

Though we've seen Pileated woodpeckers in other places, having one visit My Florida Backyard was very exciting. Somehow, we feel a little more acquainted with a species once it visits us at home. It was a wonderful way to ring in the first weekend of fall weather, and made the hours of weed-pulling ahead seem that much more pleasant.

Our Only Native Stork

2011-09-29T20:55:00.000-04:00

We get many wading bird visitors in My Florida Backyard. A couple of our favorites are Limpkins (which we've written about before) and Wood Storks, both of which are on the endangered list in the United States. It's exciting to know that our lake provides habitat for these birds, which we see regularly enough that if we didn't know they were endangered we would never have guessed.

Wood Storks (Mycteria americana) are the only storks that live and breed in the US. They're found in Florida and along the Gulf Coast, and a few isolated populations are known in North and South Carolina. During the drier months, they're often found in pretty heavy concentrations around freshwater lakes and watering holes, so as the rainy season comes to an end, we'll see larger numbers of them in and around My Florida Backyard.

Wood Storks are easily identifiable by their bald black heads. Presumably this lack of feathers makes feeding easier as there are no feathers to dry and preen after dunking their heads in the water. These birds wade in the shallows and use their brightly colored feet as lures. They trail their open beaks through the water until it makes contact with something (hopefully food), at which point it snaps shut with a reflex response time of 25 milliseconds - an incredibly fast response time among vertebrates.

Wood Storks are also easy to identify in flight. As you can see in the picture above, taken a few years ago, the bottom half of their wings are black. Combined with their dark heads, this makes them easy to tell apart from other large white birds in flight.

We're always very conscious of the amazing array of wildlife in My Florida Backyard. Knowing a species in endangered makes a sighting that much more exciting, but we value every thing that walks or flies through our gardens each day, including these magnificent Wood Storks.

From Orange to Pink

2011-09-27T20:54:00.001-04:00

The amazing Florida photographer and artist Clyde Butcher has said that in Florida, clouds are our mountains. The towering banks of afternoon thunderheads add the texture to the sky that our flat landscape lacks. In fact, our flat landscape provides the wide-open sky needed for spectacular displays, whether it's the powerful spectacle of lightning in the distance, or the vivid but silent splash of color across the evening sky at sunset.

Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows

In yonder West; the fair, frail palaces,

The fading alps and archipelagoes,

And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas.

~Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "Miracles"

Orange in Bloom

2011-09-24T21:06:00.000-04:00

This spring, we planted a variety of new canna bulbs we ordered online. Cannas come in a wide selection of colors, most of which aren't available locally, but you can find some interesting options online. Since we planted them, they've grown well, putting on plenty of large green leaves, but have been very slow to bloom. This past week, at last, one of the new plants finally deigned to show some color.

This isn't one of the showier cannas we planted. It's called Tangelo, and on closer inspection, you can see the orange blooms are actually touched with yellow.

Fortunately, the occasional invasion from canna skipper caterpillars don't really damage the blooms, though they do cause some leaf damage. As wildlife gardeners, we tolerate these caterpillars rather than use pesticides, although if we spot the eggs before they hatch, we scrape them off. They're fascinating caterpillars, as we've noted before in previous posts.

We're still waiting on some of the more exotic-colored flowers to make their first appearances, like Cleopatra and Yellow King Humbert. We planted them in an area with part shade, which is usually fine for Cannas this far south, but we're wondering if this could be keeping them from flowering. Fortunately, since they're bulbs, they'll be easy to transplant this winter or spring if we need to.

In the meantime, we'll appreciate the blooms we have. Autumn is here, according to the calendar, so hopefully soon the temperatures will drop and we'll be outside doing clean-up and new fall plantings. We can hardly wait!

The Girl in the Green Jacket

2011-09-20T21:38:00.000-04:00

Dragonflies always amaze us with their abilities to come in so many colors and sizes. We love that they hang around eating smaller and more annoying insects like mosquitoes, and that when they mate, they often form a heart-shaped duo. One of the more common dragonflies in Florida is the Common Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis), sometimes called the Green Jacket. The name "Green Jacket" is really only appropriate for females of the species, though - the males are a powdery blue color.

Female Common Pondhawk

Male Common Pondhawk

Dragonflies are amazing in flight, with some species reaching speeds over 40 miles per hour. Their individual wing control allows them to make very precise maneuvers, perfect for plucking a pesky mosquito from mid-air. We always welcome natural mosquito control in My Florida Backyard, and when it comes in such beautifully-colored packaging, we just can't lose!

If you're interested in learning more about dragonflies and their relatives, damselflies, click here to read a post I wrote for Tales From a Butterfly Garden.

Laying Low

2011-09-14T18:29:00.000-04:00

This mallard is taking it easy in the summer heat...
and so are we.

You may have noticed the scarcity of posts here on My Florida Backyard in recent weeks. We're still here - we promise. It just seems hard to find much to write about lately. The yard is overgrown and new plantings are still a few weeks off, waiting for the day when the forecast stops including 90-degree temperatures. Birds, except for ducks, have mostly deserted us, since food is plentiful everywhere and they don't need to flock to backyard feeders or inland ponds like they do in mid-winter. Caterpillars still abound, but you can only write so many posts about them, no matter how much you love them.

We're still dedicated to our yard and to wildlife, though. I'm doing a lot of writing for other blogs, where the posts don't depend so heavily on the wildlife in and around our little suburban lot. I've been writing about stinging caterpillars and swarming hummingbirds over at the Birds & Blooms Blog, among other things of interest to Southeastern gardeners and birders. I've also done some posts on how caterpillars use silk and edible caterpillars for Tales From the Butterfly Garden, a blog that takes you behind the scenes of the MOSI BioWorks Butterfly Garden where I work. Drop by and check out these posts and others, if you like.

My Florida Backyard should be full of excitement again before too long. Migration season is in full swing, so we're about to fill the bird feeders and see who drops by. Fall color is just around the corner too, with purple asters, blooming muhly grass, and ripe beautyberries all waiting to be admired. So don't take us off your "to read" list... we promise to be back just as soon as there's something fun and interesting to report!

Hidden Away

2011-09-05T19:51:00.000-04:00

We know we've been a little remiss with the blog posts here on My Florida Backyard lately. It seems we're in the doldrums of late summer, with not much happening. We've started clearing out some of the overgrowth lately, though, getting ready for some fresh fall plantings whenever that cooler fall weather arrives. Recent rains and winds had beaten our amazing forest of Partridge Pea down, so we removed nearly all of it, leaving just a few plants to provide seed for next year. The butterfly garden is very bare without it.

On the plus side it gave us a chance to rediscover some of the plants tucked away underneath it all. The dotted horsemint (Monarda punctata) is even more prolific than we had realized.

Some 'Coral Nymph' Salvia coccinea is doing pretty well under there as well, along with some purple Lantana montevidensis.

Nearby, after pulling some overgrown grass and other weeds, we found some brilliant pink Pentas lanceolata, along with an orange zinnia that must have popped up from seed.

So, we found some hidden treasure in the garden, which was nice. Oh, and don't worry about the sulphur butterflies who were using the Partridge Pea as host plants - they've got plenty of room on the nearby Cassia bicapsularis for their caterpillars!

Fire and Rain

2011-08-29T23:52:00.001-04:00

We've been enjoying the rainy season here in My Florida Backyard. We monitor the rain gauge daily, feeling almost as if we've accomplished something ourselves when there's a good reading, like today's inch and a half. Wandering the gardens after the rains, we love to watch as wildlife re-emerges and activity picks up. This Gulf Fritillary dropped by the Firebush as soon as the last raindrops had fallen.

Firebush (Hamelia patens) is one of our very favorite Florida native shrubs. Though vulnerable to freeze, it grows back so quickly, even from the ground, that it can even be grown up north as a perennial. The "fire" in its name can be attributed to the color of the tube-shaped blooms and leaf stalks, the reddish tinge of the new foliage, or the brilliant flame hue of the leaves in late fall.

Firebush is a terrific wildlife-attractant. Butterflies, especially sulphurs, love it. It's one of the two plants we've seen hummingbirds visit in My Florida Backyard (the other is Coral Honeysuckle). Birds, including Mockingbirds, love to eat the berries that follow the blooms throughout the year.

There is another type of firebush that is not native to Florida: Hamelia patens var. glabra, sold as “Dwarf Firebush”. This non-native hails from Mexico and Central America. There is some concern that it may be hybridizing with our native species, although no particular warnings or prohibitions have yet been issued. Native firebush, shown below and throughout this post, has orange flowers and lighter green leaves, while dwarf firebush has orange and yellow blooms and shiny darker green leaves. Both attract wildlife, but we find native firebush a little easier to grow.

There are still at least six weeks left in the rainy season, and though the temperatures and humidity are high, the rain is welcome in the garden. So for now, the rain continues to fall, wildlife wanders through, and summer lingers on here in My Florida Backyard.

Look Alike

2011-08-23T22:37:00.000-04:00

Things always seem to slow down in the garden in August. It's so very very hot, with rain nearly every day, and we don't always seem to get out to see what's going on like we do in the cooler months. There's still plenty of activity, though, as we found when we turned over the oleander leaves and discovered some new caterpillars the other day.

Polka dots! We knew pretty quickly what these caterpillars were likely to be. Last year, we posted about the Spotted Oleander Moth (Empyreuma affinis), a Caribbean species that has been moving its range steadily north for the last 30 years or so. It feeds, as should be extremely obvious, on oleander (Nerium oleander).

The Spotted Oleander Moth is similar in appearance to the Common Oleander Moth, also called the Polka-Dotted Wasp Moth (Syntomeida epilais), both as adult moth and and as a caterpillar. The common oleander caterpillar is familiar to anyone who has oleander in their yards, as a bright orange caterpillar with black spiky hairs (click here to see a picture). The Spotted Oleander Moth caterpillar is also orange, but with white spots and mostly white hairs, with longer black hairs at the front and back.

All parts of the oleander plant are very toxic, so it seems likely that any caterpillars that feed on it would be toxic as well. The bright coloring of the spotted oleander caterpillar is a good indicator of that danger - it's a form of defense called "aposematism". These bright colors basically indicate to possible predators that the organism in question is likely to make them sick if eaten. The hairs of this caterpillar, or setae, are harmless to humans, but likely very irritating to anything trying to ingest it.

The common oleander caterpillar is a known pest on oleander plants, but the spotted oleander caterpillar shown here is not considered to be as destructive as they are not as gregarious. We found only three altogether on our oleander plants, so that seems true.

Not that it matters to us. Since our yard is designed to attract wildlife, we rarely consider any new creatures to be pests in My Florida Backyard. This recent find was a good reminder that summer heat doesn't keep wildlife from visiting the garden, and it shouldn't keep us from visiting either!

Skipping 'Round the Garden

2011-08-16T20:21:00.001-04:00

Not all butterflies are big and colorful. Some are small and need to be seen up close to be truly appreciated. Case in point: the Long-Tailed Skipper (Urbanus proteus). This diminutive butterfly is only a couple of inches in size, and seen in flight might appear to be a drab brown. But take a closer look - there's more than first meets the eye.

Long-Tailed Skippers lay eggs on a variety of plants in the pea and bean family (Fabacae). In the past, we've had Long-Tailed Skipper caterpillars on Hairypod Cowpea (Vigna luteola) and Creeping Beggarweed (Desmodium incanum). We've grown green beans and peas for them, too. This year, we have a new "volunteer" host plant for these skippers, Dixie Tick Trefoil (Desmodium tortuosum), a non-native that has naturalized in the southern US. A seed from this plant most likely hitched a ride home from the butterfly garden where I work, and has taken hold and grown... and grown... and grown. This plant is now well over six feet tall, and the leaves are kind of like condominiums for skipper caterpillars.

Skippers are leaf-rolling caterpillars. They use silk to pull the leaves around them to protect them while they eat. The leaves of D. tortuosum are soft and textured in a way that actually makes them stick to each other very easily, rather like Velcro. Perhaps this helps the caterpillars with the rolling?

Long-Tailed Skippers lay their eggs in stacks several high. We managed to catch this one in the act of ovipositing the other day - if you click the picture to enlarge it and look very closely, you can see the eggs she's already laid on the leaf at the end of her abdomen.

The light wasn't great, but we didn't want to disturb her, obviously. We did flip over the leaf and get a better shot of the eggs themselves when she was done.

Long-Tailed Skipper caterpillars have fun little heads, shaped almost like the peas and beans from their host plants. This caterpillar looks similar to other skipper caterpillars, like the Dorantes Skipper, but is easy to distinguish due to its bright orange hind end.

When ready to pupate, the caterpillar rolls itself up one final time for a safe place to transform into chrysalis. The chrysalis of the Long-Tailed Skipper is coated in a powdery substance that is a actually wax (click here to see a picture). After a couple of weeks, they emerge as butterflies to begin the process again.

Big or small, the butterfly and its life process is fascinating. We're so glad to have such a wide variety of species in all parts of their life cycle here in My Florida Backyard!

Fields of Gold

2011-08-12T18:57:00.000-04:00

It's not a good idea to turn your back on a Florida yard in the summer. You take a short vacation, and when you return, it's clear the plants have taken over. Just last week, the weeds and grass were there, but you seemed to be keeping them in check. A few days (and, according to the rain gauge, five inches of rain) later, and it's obvious you're no longer in control.

It's not always a bad thing, though. Given free reign, native wildflowers can fill your yard with color. Last year, we had two Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata) plants in the butterfly garden. They dropped plenty of seeds, and this year the two have multiplied exponentially, literally taking over.

It does seem like a little much, perhaps. Everything else in the butterfly garden is pretty much buried. Then again, the wave of yellow and soft feathery green looks better than most of the rest of the plants this time of year. And the sulphur butterflies (who lay eggs on the leaves) and pollinators like bees just love it.

A few other plants have managed to poke their heads through, too. The Yellowtop (Flaveria linearis) is blooming too, adding to the fields of gold.

And the sunflowers we started from seeds are adding to the golden glow.

Of course, there's always someone who has to be a little different, who likes to stand out from the crowd. The Dotted Horsemint is poking up through the partridge pea, with its unusual fairy-like blooms. Against the fields of gold, the delicate hue is especially soft and lovely.

We know that the gardens in My Florida Backyard are in charge, for now. It's simply too hot and muggy to fight back against the jungle. For now, we'll sit back and let the inmates run the asylum, happy to appreciate the colors they display and the wildlife they bring.

Beautiful Stranger

2011-08-02T18:18:00.001-04:00

So often, a wildlife sighting happens out of the corner of your eye. By the time you turn your head to look more closely, the object of your attention may be gone. Or - if it happens to be your lucky day - it will be sitting there patiently, ready to be admired, and maybe even willing to wait while you run for the camera.

You approach cautiously, your first photos from a distance and perhaps not clear, but at least now you've gotten a few shots.

Feeling emboldened, you move in a little closer, hoping for a better picture. Your prey is still obscured a bit, but there's still a certain charm to the shot.

Do you dare move that leaf out of the way? You take a deep breath, move the leaf ever so gently... and it takes off! Will it fly away, or hover and land nearby again? Fortune is with you! It alights nearby, in an even better position.

Oh, what a perfect shot! The White Peacock (Anartia jatrophae) butterfly you've been stalking is in pristine condition, and its appearance is all the more special because of the rarity of the sighting. Once a common sight in My Florida Backyard, White Peacocks all but disappeared after the record cold winter of 2010, returning only in the last month or two - nearly a year and a half later.

The butterfly seems content to hold still, and you zoom in closer and take dozens of shots (thank goodness for digital cameras), wondering exactly what happened to the Tampa population. White Peacocks are a butterfly of the tropics, common from South Texas and Florida all the way down to South America. Was the resident population killed off when temperatures didn't rise above 45 degrees for a full week in 2010? Has a new population just now migrated north into the area?

There's no way to know for sure. A few of these were seen in the Tampa Bay area last year, in wetter spots on the edge of the bay, where temperatures would have been a bit more moderate during the cold snap. But in My Florida Backyard and other butterfly gardens nearby, butterfly lovers noted the absence of these beauties and hoped they would return to their former abundance someday.

They seem to be doing so now. This was one of a pair haunting My Florida Backyard yesterday. Their beautiful condition indicates they were recently emerged, having undoubtedly grown from caterpillars right here in the area; they breed mainly on Water Hyssop (Bacopa) at the edge of lakes and ponds, and are clearly doing so again here. This sighting not only gave us the chance to photograph a perfect specimen of a gorgeous butterfly - it also gave us the chance to photograph hope for the future.

Middle of the Midwest

2011-07-29T22:51:00.000-04:00

Have grown up in the midwest, we can't help but feel a fondness for an Ohio garden in mid-summer. Visiting my mom in the heart of Ohio's Amish Country last week gave us chance to admire those staples of a midwestern summer garden - Black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, Shasta daisies, hostas, and daylilies galore!

Some of these plants will grow in central Florida, but they don't thrive in quite the same fashion. Hosta here rarely receives the cold dormant winter period it requires, and certainly doesn't grow so prolifically that neighbors will happily let you dig up large clumps to start your own gardens. These plants are beloved up north as excellent ground cover almost anywhere, and the tall flower spikes that begin in mid-summer are a draw for butterflies and hummingbirds.

Speaking of butterflies and hummingbirds - we found Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies just about everywhere in Ohio this time of year. These are found in Florida as well, but they don't seem to be seen in such great numbers.

And the hummingbirds! They are rare visitors in My Florida Backyard, especially in the summer when the heat is simply too much for the tiny creatures. But in the midwest, Ruby-Throated hummingbirds are a common sight all summer long, visiting nectar plants and sugar water feeders throughout the day and tempting nature-lovers with cameras to take way too many pictures (we've narrowed it down to a couple of our favorite shots).

A midwestern sunset can be pretty beautiful, but at the end of the day, we're always happy to return to My Florida Backyard. In a few months, our gardens will still be full of blooms while those up north will be covered in snow, and that's something we just wouldn't trade for anything!

Life in a Northern Town

2011-07-25T18:48:00.000-04:00

Visiting family up north in Ohio is always fun, partly because the birds that visit their backyard feeders are so different than the birds that visit ours. At my dad's house in Canton, Ohio, dozens of small songbirds visit his feeders each day, most of which we never have a chance to see in Central Florida. His yard is flanked by tall trees, so even in an urban setting, it's not unusual to have 10 or 12 birds at his feeders at a time, waiting for their turn and fighting off the squirrels.

Finches especially are fond of nyjer thistle seed, like this American Goldfinch pair. The males are a brilliant yellow during mating season, with females only slightly duller. This species is known to winter as far south as Florida, and this year we plan to try a thistle feeder and see if we can't lure a few to My Florida Backyard.

Finches will eat black oil sunflower seed too, and this red-headed House Finch joined a White-Breasted Nuthatch in a search for dinner. Nuthatches are very fun to watch, as they frequently feed head-down both at feeders and along tree trunks. Neither of these birds are seen in Florida, so we have to enjoy them when we're out of town.

Perhaps our favorite Ohio backyard visitor, though, is the Black-Capped Chickadee. Another bird we'll never see in Florida, these little guys are so friendly they're often known to eat out of people's hands. Their call is easy to recognize... they sing "Chickadee-dee-dee!" early and often, and their adorable hopping behavior endears them to nearly all backyard bird lovers.

As much as we love My Florida Backyard, a trip to another backyard is always fun. The birds at my dad's are very different than those at home, and we truly enjoyed the chance to watch them for a few days!

P.S. There was one familiar visitor to this Ohio backyard... this little Tufted Titmouse dropped by to remind us of home!

Give Me a "J"!

2011-07-19T19:40:00.000-04:00

We came around the corner in the garden the other day and almost ran smack into this monarch caterpillar, hanging in the classic "J" position and preparing to pupate into chrysalis.

This is a pretty common sight in My Florida Backyard. Most species of butterfly caterpillars display this behavior, spinning a silk pad and attaching their hind end to it by a hook called a "cremaster". The rest of their body hangs free, allowing the caterpillar to shed its skin one last time and form a chrysalis. (Learn more about each species below by clicking the name.)

Zebra Longwing:

Queen:

Other butterfly species hang in a modified "J", using a second strand of silk to secure themselves across the middle. This adds an extra level of security in case the cremaster accidentally becomes detached.

Giant Swallowtail:

Eastern Black Swallowtail:

Observing the full life cycle of butterflies is just one of the joys of building and maintaining a wildlife habitat. Watching these creatures from egg to caterpillar to pupa to butterfly never fails to impress us with the amazing complexity of nature at its finest!

Over My Shoulder

2011-07-14T00:03:00.000-04:00

We were a little startled this evening by the bird perched on our backyard feeder. He was most definitely not there for the safflower seed... that's just not part of the diet of a juvenile Red-Shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus).

We made our way outside to see him a bit more clearly. We knew he was juvenile because of the white coloration of his breast. Adults have reddish-brown breast feathers. The tail feathers also show distinct bands, a characteristic of a younger hawk of this species.

Red-shouldered hawks are a common predator in My Florida Backyard. They've been responsible for picking off plenty of baby ducklings, and last year we watched one take down a crow (click here to learn more). If this one continues to haunt the bird feeder, we will most likely see very few songbirds for awhile, but tonight the sight of this hawk was enough to fill us with awe... and that's enough for one day.

Hot Pink

2011-07-10T20:20:00.001-04:00

It's been a little gloomy in My Florida Backyard this week, with record rainfalls and lots of overcast skies. Fortunately, the gardens have plenty of color to counteract the gray conditions... case in point: these hot pink zinnias.

We've been loving zinnias this year. Some we've started from seed, others (like these) we've bought as plants. They seem to bloom without concern for sun or rain, especially if we remember to get out and deadhead every once in awhile, and the butterflies like to stop by for a drink when they're in the neighborhood. They're such an easy annual, with such big payoff!

Bend Down the Branches

2011-07-06T21:36:00.000-04:00

When we opened the blinds on the back windows this morning, we squinted into the morning sun and were greeted with this sight:

Taking pictures through a screen into the sun isn't really optimal, but you can still get the idea. This female anhinga was perched in our very young cypress tree, bending it halfway to the ground as she dried her wings.

Anhingas (Anhinga anhinga) are waterbirds common in Central Florida. They resemble cormorants, but in warmer months, cormorants are nearly always found on salt water rather than freshwater. Anhingas are more common on freshwater all year.

Anhingas swim with almost their entire body submerged, ducking entirely below the surface to swim for prey. When they surface and wish to fly, they must emerge onto dry land and dry their wings. Unlike ducks, they do not have oils on their wings to make the feathers waterproof. This makes it easier to dive but harder to fly in a hurry. So they are often found perched along the edge of waterways, wings spread to the sun.

With a patch of tall strong pine trees only ten yards to the right, this cypress seems like an odd choice for this anhinga. The landing must have been amusing, as the tree bent closer and closer to the earth, and the bird struggled for balance. Still, she managed it, and although this great blue heron that wandered over almost seems to be saying, "What are you doing up there?", we're glad to have anhingas anywhere they want to be in My Florida Backyard.

American Red, White, and Blues

2011-07-04T00:01:00.003-04:00

"May the sun in his course visit no land

more free, more happy, more lovely,

than this our own country!"

~Daniel Webster

Happy Independence Day from My Florida Backyard!

Wild Turkey

2011-06-29T22:27:00.000-04:00

We were pleased to find a few patches of what has to be the best-named wildflower out there growing near the lake in My Florida Backyard. It seems like such a nondescript little plant to have such a silly and fun name, but there it is... Phyla nodiflora, commonly known as "Turkey Tangle Fogfruit", or sometimes just Frogfruit.

This little native plant is actually pretty important for butterfly gardeners - the Common Buckeye, White Peacock, and Phaon Crescent all use it as a caterpillar host plant. Smaller butterflies nectar on the little purple and white flowers too, so a patch or two of this can be very valuable.

As for the fun and crazy name of this plant... well, that's anyone's guess. No amount of searching has turned up any clue as to who gave this wildflower its common name, or why they chose that of all names. If you have any clue, please drop us a comment. We really hate unsolved mysteries in My Florida Backyard!

Orange Wings

2011-06-26T19:30:00.000-04:00

Even with the very dry weather we had leading up to our recent welcome rains, the Golden Dewdrop (Duranta erecta) has been putting on new growth and blooming happily in the butterfly garden, in soft shades almost reminiscent of an Impressionist painting.

The soft colors quickly fade to the background when the orange wings of the Gulf Fritillary butterfly appear, as they do throughout the day, every day, in My Florida Backyard. This is by far our most common butterfly visitor, and our most populous caterpillar, as the tattered state of our passionvine can attest.

The ever-changing palette of colors in My Florida Backyard is always worth watching, in wet weather and dry.

Live and Let Live

2011-06-21T21:43:00.000-04:00

So, it's summer in Florida. It's hot. Really hot. The kind of hot where you sweat just thinking about going outside, and can suffer heat stroke on your way to the mailbox. Yup, it's hot. And, I'm sorry to say, that means we've been neglecting the gardens in My Florida Backyard. The time for new plantings is past for now, and we're relying on the gardens to do their best with what they have, which is why it was so nice to go outside the other day and discover that the Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) was flowering for the first time in months.

Echinacea is a little out of its range in Central Florida - something about our climate means that while the plants can survive, they certainly don't thrive like they do up north. Rather than growing to 3 or 4 feet tall, here they tend to top out around 12 inches or so. But given the right conditions, they do still flower well, and it seems that, without doing anything in particular, we've finally started providing the right conditions for our Echinacea. It's not very tall, but it has more flowers than ever before. Apparently, it thrives on benign neglect!

Our Echinacea is in the butterfly garden, where it receives morning sun and afternoon shade. The soil there is dry and fairly poor. It's currently nearly buried by more robust plants nearby, and to be honest, we'd forgotten it was there. We had only a few anemic-looking blooms on it last year, and left it on its own. It's rewarding us by coming back with vigor, perhaps proving that whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger!

Echinacea is well-known by both medicinal and butterfly gardeners, and it's nice to have it finally doing reasonably well. It will never be like the coneflower up north (see our pictures from Ohio last summer for proof), but we love it for doing the best it can in a very difficult environment!

Lily Was Here

2011-06-16T11:14:00.000-04:00

In honor of the rain that finally fell in My Florida Backyard last night, today we're featuring the rain lily (Zephyranthes atamasca), a really great little Florida wildflower. Rain lilies, as their name implies, pop up after a good rainstorm in the spring and early summer. They are native to the eastern U.S. from Virginia down through northern Florida, and often seem to grow where no one remembers planting them, especially in the middle of grassy lawns.

Rain lilies grow from bulbs, and will definitely spread over time. If you have some growing randomly in your lawn and you'd like to move them to a new place, simply dig up the bulbs and transplant. You can expect several periods of bloom during the spring and summer, usually a few days after a heavy rain following a dry spell. They're the sort of flower you tend to forget is there until they suddenly surprise you with delicate color and subtle fragrance.

Rain lilies often figure fondly in the memories of long-time Florida residents. Because they're a native wildflower, they've been around since the early days of settlement, popping up just like fleabane or toadflax but with a more cultivated feel. The ones in My Florida Backyard are a soft rosy pink when they first bloom, fading to almost white in a few days. We like to snap off a handful and bring them inside to a small bud vase, where they'll last for several days.

If you don't have rain lilies in your yard, but would like to have them, you can purchase bulbs online from places like American Meadows. This is a simple, elegant, easy-to-grow flower that anyone can plant and enjoy. We're so glad to have them (and the rain that makes them bloom!) here in My Florida Backyard.

Empty Nest

2011-06-13T18:29:00.000-04:00

For those who've been following the progress of the mockingbabies, we're sorry to report that they have all apparently been taken by predators as of this afternoon. While the nest was fine yesterday and feeding activity continued at high levels, today we discovered the nest is empty. The remains of one chick lay on the ground below, while the other two were nowhere to be seen, nor were their parents. Clearly, predators of some type, most likely hawks, were able to access the nest and take the young despite their parents' best efforts.

While nature lovers know that the circle of life is true and inevitable, it's still rather sad for us to see this nest that we've watched so closely end in failure. We hope the parents have lived to fly off and start again. As for us, My Florida Backyard seems strangely empty now, but we know that wildlife flourishes all around us and that there's plenty of life left to observe and love.

Daily Growing

2011-06-11T20:32:00.000-04:00

The mockingbabies are about 5 days old now, and while we wouldn't say they're all that much cuter, they're definitely bigger! As of this morning, their eyes are open and they have begun making faint "cheeping" noises in response to sounds. They are also beginning to develop pin feathers on their wings. Still, they're mostly beak and fuzz, and they spend their days eating and sleeping... just like most babies. Here's a picture of the mockingparents - they take turns on food duty and watch duty pretty much all day long.

Here are the latest baby photos, and a short video in which you can hear some of their "first words". Enjoy, and check back early next week for another mockingbaby update!

Hush Little Baby

2011-06-07T12:39:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, we noticed an exciting event taking place in My Florida Backyard. For the first time since we've lived here, a pair of birds have decided to nest on our property! They're Northern Mockingbirds, and they've built their nest in the honeysuckle right off the back porch, giving us a front row view to all the action. We've been documenting the action over the last couple of weeks, and this morning, we found the hatchlings have emerged! Here's the lead-up to today's blessed event:

And here are the three unbelievably ugly babies! They are obviously very newly-hatched, possibly just today. Their eyes are not yet open, and they aren't chirping yet. While their parents are out foraging for food, the chicks just lay limply in the nest awaiting the next meal, at which point their little heads shoot up and their beaks open wide...

And finally, let's go to the videotape! We made some chirping sounds like their parents might to see their response... do you think these little guys are hungry?

We'll be documenting their growth in the days ahead. Check back often for updates on the mockingbabies!

Where Corn Don't Grow

2011-06-04T21:13:00.000-04:00

One of the important parts of any wildlife habitat, even one that's only one tenth of an acre in suburbia, is offering food sources. We offer plenty of them in My Florida Backyard, like bird feeders, shrubs with berries, caterpillar host plants, and butterfly nectar plants. This week we added a new feeder, this one for creatures that most people have a love-hate relationship with... squirrels.

We got this fun feeder from Gardener's Supply Company, though there are other versions of it out there. We like how sturdy this one is, and the graceful design. So far, we haven't seen any squirrels visiting, but that's most likely because there's a pair of nesting mockingbirds about 10 yards away from this feeder, and they've been keeping everyone else out of the yard (more on that soon). We look forward to seeing if the squirrels eventually find and enjoy this new feeder just for them!

White Lightning

2011-05-28T20:45:00.000-04:00

Though My Florida Backyard hasn't seen rain in several weeks, there has been rain in the area, taunting us from a distance. The other night, a line of storms about twenty miles away to the east gave us a spectacular light show. Starting around dusk, and continuing for at least an hour, the massive clouds were nearly constantly aglow with electricity; at the peak, we estimated 50 to 100 flashes per minute. Though it takes a better camera than the one we have to truly get good lightning pictures, we gave it a shot, and got a few we thought worth sharing.

The storms were so far we away that we heard only the very faintest rumbles of thunder from time to time, and mostly the show unfolded in the quiet of a summer evening. We only hope that future storms come a little closer and bring us the rain that My Florida Backyard so desperately needs.

Blueberry Kisses

2011-05-26T10:50:00.001-04:00

Back in January, when we spent some time dreaming over seed catalogs, one of the new blooms that caught our eye was Vinca 'First Kiss Blueberry'. Park Seed offered this deep purple-blue version of one of our favorite annuals, and we decided it was worth a try.

Our results haven't been too bad, and the color itself matches the advertised picture pretty well, although the bloom fades a bit after a few days. We started 10 seeds around the middle of February, and 5 of them sprouted well (it took nearly 30 days) and grew into healthy plants. They started to bloom about two weeks ago, and we're hoping the plants will become bushier and covered with more blooms, as vincas usually do once they get well established.

We're keeping them in a planter on the porch for now while they get stronger and more vigorous, though we may eventually plant them outside. Vincas are wonderfully hardy once they get going - once their root systems get established, they weather heat and drought without blinking an eye. They also tend to re-seed pretty readily, so we're hoping to gather some seed from these vincas and grow more of this wonderful color to spread around My Florida Backyard in the future.

American Beauty

2011-05-24T09:00:00.002-04:00

It's no secret that one of our favorite native shrubs is the American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana). Although it's deciduous, it's an interesting plant every day of the year. The berries that appear in fall stay with the bush through the leafless days of winter (at least until the birds eat them), and when the soft green leaves appear in the spring, the delicate pink blooms won't be far behind.

Most people are familiar with the purple-berried version of C. americana, but on a recent trip to Wilcox Nursery in Largo, we found the white-berried version at last, and we snapped one up to add to our Beautyberry hedge. At this time of year, the leaves and flowers look exactly the same, but we look forward to seeing the white berries mixed with the purple when fall arrives.

If you're new to American Beautyberry, check out some of our previous posts to learn more. If you're already a Beautyberry lover and you don't have the white-berried version yet, check with Wilcox or your local native plant nursery to see if they have any in stock. We're very glad to have one at last in My Florida Backyard!

Mint Condition

2011-05-21T17:37:00.002-04:00

This neat little shrub is another of our purchases from Wilcox Nursery last weekend. It's called Georgia Basil or Georgia Calamint (Calamintha georgiana). While it is native to Florida, it's very rare here, found only in a few of the northern counties. It's much more common throughout much of zone 8, including Alabama and Georgia (as you might expect from the name).

Calamint is a member of the Lamiaceae family, which includes culinary herbs like mint and basil. Interestingly, that's exactly what Calamint smells like - a combination of mint and basil. It can be used as seasoning in cooking, or even in making teas.

Practical uses aside, look at these little flowers! Though calamint supposedly blooms only in the fall, ours has one stem covered in blooms right now, and truly it was these little flowers that made us notice the plant in the first place. The flowers themselves are very attractive to bees and smaller butterflies, making it a nice addition to the wildlife garden.

Calamint prefers sandy well-drained soil, and will tolerate full to part sun. Since we live in zone 9b, a little to the south of its common range, we chose to plant it in only part sun, thinking the full sun of summer might be a bit too much for it. It's described as an evergreen, growing to about 2 feet maximum, so it's perfect in the corner of the butterfly garden. We look forward to seeing it this fall when, we've been promised, it will be completely covered in delightful blooms. All in all, a great little native that we're glad to add to My Florida Backyard!

Hot Button

2011-05-17T22:21:00.000-04:00

As promised, here is the first of several posts detailing our purchases at Wilcox Nursery this past weekend. First up: Button Sage (Lantana involucrata), a small and terrific native shrub.

Lantana varieties are one of the best butterfly nectar plants out there. Unfortunately, the most common species sold is Lantana camara, which has become invasive in Florida. L. camara quickly escaped cultivation in Florida and has hybridized with our native Lantana depressa to the point that the Florida Association of Native Nurseries no longer recognizes L. depressa as a true native. (See: The Lantana Mess.) That means that Lantana involucrata, known as Button Sage, is the only true Florida native lantana available for sale, and finding it can be a challenge.

Button Sage is common in coastal areas from Central Florida south. It likes well-drained soil and will take full to part sun. It blooms year-round and is hardy to zone 8a, so though it may take a little frost damage in the winter, it should recover quickly and stay green all winter. Like all lantanas, it's drought-tolerant once established but will bloom best with regular water. We planted ours out back near the butterfly garden where it has room to grow and spread, in a mostly sunny spot.

Button sage is a wonderful wildlife plant. The flowers are big nectar draws for butterflies. The subsequent purple berries (how pretty!) are great for songbirds. As a shrub, it provides shelter for smaller creatures as well. All in all, button sage is a must-have for any native wildlife gardener, though it's fairly difficult to find. If you see one, snap it up like we did!

Temptation

2011-05-15T21:30:00.000-04:00

It was a glorious Sunday afternoon, and we took advantage of the day to drive across to Largo and visit Wilcox Nursery (our very favorite native plant nursery in the Tampa area) to get some muhly grass we'd been wanting for the front yard. Of course, that wasn't the only thing we bought, not by a long shot. Spring is just too tempting of a time to visit a native plant nursery - here's what we ended up coming home with:

The white-berried variety of American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)
Necklace Pod (Sophora tomentosa)
Twinflower (Linnaea borealis)
Button Sage (Lantana involucrata)
Georgia Calamintha (Calamintha georgiana)

Look for detailed posts on these in the days ahead, as we settle our new residents into their places!

Things Look Rosy Now

2011-05-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

Look who else has been bursting into bloom while we weren't looking! The Gaura lindheimeri has put on dozens of rosy blossoms in the butterfly garden.

Gaura is native to Florida, although this particular variety ('Whirling Butterflies') has been hybridized to create a more compact plant with a greater number of blooms. The wilder gaura is wonderful too, and both have beautiful little flowers to admire up close.

Spring and its seemingly endless parade of new blooms never fails to amaze us in My Florida Backyard!

In the Queen's Garden

2011-05-10T11:00:00.003-04:00

We've been growing more plants from seeds this year in My Florida Backyard, and while our backs were turned, the Queen Red Lime Zinnia began to bloom for the first time!

We started this butterfly-friendly flower from a new seed offered by Burpee this year, and we're pleased to see it's just as lovely as advertised!

Zinnias are one of the easiest flowers to start from seed, and the varieties available these days seem just about endless. We're so glad to have this new variety blooming in My Florida Backyard!

Blanket on the Ground

2011-05-08T21:59:00.001-04:00

We've been busy the last week or so... out-of-town guests, busy work schedules, and seemingly dozens of other things conspired to keep us from spending nearly as much time in My Florida Backyard as we would have liked. Fortunately, My Florida Backyard is perfectly capable of surviving and even thriving on benign neglect, and new blooms are popping up everywhere - not the least of which is the Blanket Flower.

Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella) is a wonderful native Florida wildflower. It asks for nothing but soil (sand will do), sun, and the occasional bit of rain, and rewards you with loads of cheery blooms for months on end. Then, it spreads its seeds, ensuring its return for years to come. In fact, all of our Gaillardia come from a single packet of seed we purchased for a couple of bucks a few years ago.

Gaillardia is great for pollinators and a natural in a wildflower garden. You'll often find it along roadsides and in wildflower meadows, and anywhere native flowers are emphasized. It does well in containers and is even salt-tolerant, so it's really perfect just about anywhere in this great state of ours.

Now that we've had a chance to slow down and admire what My Florida Backyard has been up to recently, we look forward to catching up a little more. Look for more posts in the days ahead on what our garden's been doing while we've been looking the other way!

Pink Houses

2011-05-01T20:18:00.000-04:00

This weekend, a splotch of pink suddenly appeared on the trunk of our little cypress tree.

Upon closer inspection, we discovered a clutch of apple snail eggs.

Apple snails (family Ampullariidae) are freshwater snails that are able to survive both on water and on land. By laying their eggs above the water line, apple snails protect the eggs from predation by fish and other water dwellers.

Apple snails are the primary food source for limpkins, a common wading bird in My Florida Backyard. Limpkins have specially adapted beaks that curve slightly to one side, allowing them to easily extract the apple snail from its shell. Limpkins will only live in areas with large apple snail populations, so they are found only in scattered locations throughout Florida in the United States. We feel very lucky to have this bird as a regular visitor here in our yard, and we owe that to the apple snails and their pretty little pink eggs.

Flying Dutchman

2011-04-26T22:34:00.000-04:00

When Calico Dutchman's Pipevine (Aristolochia littoralis) flowers, you really can't miss it. The blooms are the size of dinner plates, and up close the smell is fairly unpleasant. Still, the blooms are fascinating in color and shape.

Honestly, we probably shouldn't have this vine in our yard. A. littoralis is invasive in Florida (it's currently on the FLEPPC Category II list). We keep it around for the Polydamas Swallowtail caterpillars to feed on. However, because it's from South America, it's actually toxic to the Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars who also can accidentally lay on it.

Fortunately, it's easy to tell the eggs of the two species apart, so by watching the vines carefully for eggs, we can remove the red ones of the Pipevine ST to the native A. tomentosa that we also grow. (Polydamas eggs are yellow.) If you're not willing to take the time to do this, it's probably best for butterfly gardeners to eliminate A. littoralis from the yard to avoid harming our native butterflies.

Down to Earth

2011-04-22T17:25:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, the National Wildlife Federation published a great article called “How Green is Your Garden?“, encouraging gardeners to consider the carbon footprint of their gardens. (Did you know a garden could even have a negative effect on the environment?) She offered six tips for reducing your garden’s carbon footprint, and I was inspired to spend some time examining those tips and deciding if they were too difficult for an average gardener to implement.

Below, you’ll find the six tips along with a brief summary of my thoughts on implementing these tips in an average garden. For a detailed look at each tip, click the links to read my original posts from 2009. Happy Earth Day!

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Tip #1:
Reduce the size of your lawn. Better yet, consider eliminating it entirely.

There's definitely an initial investment of time in changing your water-hungry lawn to a greener garden. However, down the line, your payoff is very rewarding indeed! Our lawn maintenance is almost zero during the winter months, and during the summer months, it takes only 10 - 15 minutes a week. Take the time to do some up-front work, and reap the benefits in the long run.

Tip #2:
Use hand tools instead of power equipment.

Although tools like a classic reel mower may take a little more exercise and cause some Beaver Cleaver remarks from neighbors, today’s models are easy to maintain and operate. If you’ve reduced the size of your lawn as suggested in tip #1, then this tip becomes pretty easy to implement. Plus, hand tools like rakes are a heckuva lot cheaper than leaf blowers.

Tip #3:
Choose materials with low-embodied energy.

The most difficult part of this tip is probably the research involved. Just remember to consider the total amount of energy involved in manufacturing the materials and transporting them to your yard. Choose materials like wood or crushed shell over concrete bricks or solid cement. Ask questions to find out where and how materials are made, and choose locally when possible.

Tips #4 and 5:
Emphasize woody plants that capture more carbon than fleshy herbaceous species. Plant trees and shrubs where they will block winter winds and provide shade in summer.

The key here is to remember that “woody plants” doesn’t have to mean trees. In a small lot, you may not want to plant many more tall trees than you already have. However, you can choose shrubs or woody plants that provide the same benefits. Plan your plantings to help your house conserve energy, sit back, and enjoy! (Don't forget - you can get 10 free trees with an Arbor Day Foundation membership!)

Tip #6:
Minimize, or better yet eliminate, the use of fertilizers and pesticides on your property.

Most Florida-Friendly plants will need minimal fertilization to thrive in our sandy soil, but when fertilizers are necessary, choose natural over synthetic. Depending on where you live, these may not be available locally, involving a little more work combing the internet. As for pesticides – many of the bugs in your garden are beneficial. Fire Ants? Don’t get me started on Fire Ants. Try a natural killer and spot treat only when you find them rather than putting down a broadcast killer on a regular basis.

Down in Brazil

2011-04-21T21:23:00.000-04:00

It's no secret that we have a bit of a salvia obsession in My Florida Backyard. Butterflies just love it, and so do we. I've become a collector, in fact, unable to pass up a new salvia when I see it. A few weeks ago, at the USF Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale, I picked up a new one I'd never seen before: Salvia vanhouttei.

This salvia is native to Brazil, and is actually a variety of Salvia splendens, which I'm not normally fond of because it has no nectar value. However, this variety seems to be a little less "tamed" than nursery stock, and reviews on the web note that it's attractive to hummingbirds and butterflies. The color is just beautiful, so it seemed to be worth a try.

Like many kinds of salvia, it's recommended for full sun, but since zone 9 is the high end of its range, it's more likely to benefit from some afternoon shade. So far it's thriving along with the pineapple sage, salvia farinacea, and meadow sage that are in the same bed. It's a little slice of butterfly heaven, right in My Florida Backyard.

Prettty Visitors

2011-04-16T19:59:00.000-04:00

Spring is rapidly heating up into summer here in My Florida Backyard, with afternoon highs reaching 85 and higher most days. It's ideal butterfly weather, and today we saw a couple of our favorite springtime visitors.

Buckeyes (Junonia coenia) are some of the first butterflies to appear in the spring in Florida, and we've been seeing them regularly in the gardens since mid-February this year. Before too much longer, they'll start to head north for the summer, as our Florida temperatures get to be a little to much for them by June.

Another common spring visitor is the Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta). They're about the same size as the Buckeye, and lately they seem to be everywhere! Red Admirals are one of those butterflies that have the ability to land and pretty much disappear from sight, as their underwings are colored perfectly to blend in with their surroundings.

We've been enjoying these perfect spring afternoons in My Florida Backyard, knowing that before long the sultry heat of summer will keep us indoors a little more. It's wonderful to share the gardens with butterflies enjoying the spring sunshine as well!

Iris

2011-04-14T20:43:00.000-04:00

The African Iris is beginning to flower close to our front walkway, and they keep slowing me down as I try to head to or from the car - I just have to stop and admire the lovely blooms!

African Iris (Dietes iridioides) is - as you might imagine - native to Africa, where's its generally known as Fortnight Lily, though it really is part of the Iris family (Iridaceae). It blooms starting in spring and periodically throughout the summer, generally with about two weeks (a fortnight) between flushes of blooms. Unlike other irises, flowers appear and reappear on the same stem throughout the season, so don't cut them back after blooming.

In some areas, like Southern California, African Iris is sometime said to be invasive due to is rhizomatus nature and tendency to spread. Here in Florida, that's generally considered an advantage, as the plant can be divided every few years. In fact, that's where we got ours - from a friend who was dividing some. In soil, it seems to grow to best advantage in dappled shade. In water, it can withstand more sun and will grow taller.

The exotic blooms only last a day or two, but come back regularly all summer long, while the green foliage adds nice texture to the landscape. We're always looking for new, interesting, and low-maintenance blooms for the front yard, and African Iris fits the bill well for us.

Dens of Yarrow

2011-04-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

We were pleased in recent weeks to note the return of our red yarrow, which we first planted last year. Yarrow is a spring plant, putting on new growth and flowering from April through June in Florida. After that, it tends to die back, but if left alone should return the following spring to draw butterflies to its nectar-laden blooms.

Yarrow is a plant with a long history, as its very descriptive botanical name implies - Achillea millefolium. Yarrow has long been noted for its ability to staunch the flow of blood, and Homer tells us that Achilles carried it onto the battle grounds at Troy to treat wounded soldiers. The Chinese consider it to be lucky; the Saxons wore it in amulets for protection, and medieval witches were said to use it in incantations.

My personal favorite legend about yarrow is the belief that you could determine your lover's devotion by poking a yarrow leaf up your nose and saying, "Yarroway, yarroway, bear a white blow: if my love loves me, my nose will bleed now". Since yarrow is known to irritate the nasal passages, it would often cause the person's nose to bleed. (Personally, I'll stick with daisies and "she loves me, she loves me not...")

Yarrow's medicinal properties have been well-documented, but that's not why we grow it in My Florida Backyard. We love it for its ability to draw butterflies, and to thrive in very poor soil. In fact, yarrow needs well-drained but otherwise poor soil to thrive - otherwise it's susceptible to mildew and root rot. While the white-flowered version is well-known, there are many colors available, including reds, pinks, and yellows. they love full sun and tolerate drought very well. It can be divided very few years as it spreads.

There's something really fascinating about growing a plant with a history dating back thousands of years. Once carried onto noisy battlefields, yarrow now blooms peacefully in my garden while butterflies drop by to drink the sweet nectar. Times have changed, but Achillea millefolium blooms on in My Florida Backyard.

Turtle Power

2011-04-10T21:37:00.000-04:00

Recent rains have raised the level of our lake dramatically - in fact, after the eight inches of rain we got in just three days a few weeks ago, the water was well up over the banks and we were considering building an ark. The animals of My Florida Backyard didn't really seem to mind, though, especially the ducks and the turtles. In fact, the turtles have been taking advantage of the high water level to climb out on the banks for some sun.

The turtle on the left is a Florida Softshell Turtle (Apalone ferox), whose carapace (or shell) is almost leathery in texture - very tough but flexible. Softshell turtles are pretty large, topping out around 30 inches, and have very long necks. They are amazingly fast on both water and land. They're shy around humans, so if one is up on the bank when you approach, you're likely to see it shoot back into the water at an almost alarming speed. Florida softshell turtles are carnivorous, with a diet made up of fish, frogs, and even ducklings. Over the last few springs, we've had a female soft shell turtle emerge onto land in our backyard to lay eggs - click here for details and video.

The other turtle is a Red-Bellied Cooter (Pseudemys nelsoni), another very common Florida freshwater turtle. This turtle is an herbivore, helping to keep lakes clean of algae and other plant matter. This turtle spends much of its time on land or on logs, basking in the sun. We frequently see them swimming along in the lake with just their heads poking out - so fun to watch.

Living on a lake gives us such a wide diversity of like to appreciate in My Florida Backyard, and turtles like these are great examples of those treasures.

Bird and Squirrel

2011-04-08T19:51:00.000-04:00

My most recent post over at the Birds & Blooms Blog has been very popular. We've been discussing how to keep unwanted squirrels away from bird feeders, and it seems everyone has an idea. Won't you click here to drop by the post and offer some suggestions of your own?

While you're there, take a look at some of my other recent posts, including information on native species like Baltimore Orioles and Monarch butterflies, and weekend projects like installing a rain barrel and creating a "living wall" with air plants. There's a lot available there - I hope you'll come by and check it out!

Heaven Scent

2011-04-02T20:57:00.000-04:00

Ask people to name the flowers of spring, and you'll inevitably hear daffodils, tulips, lilacs, and so on. Florida's spring brings different blooms, and in My Florida Backyard, the bloom that means spring is Confederate Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides). We have a whole wall of it growing along the north side of the porch, and for the few weeks it's in flower, the scent dominates the neighborhood.

We planted our Confederate Jasmine three years ago when we added the latticework to the porch. We needed a drought-tolerant vine that would grow in mostly shade, as this side of the house faces north. We also preferred a vine that would be evergreen, so it would look good in the cooler months of winter as well. Confederate Jasmine fit the bill perfectly.

Confederate Jasmine is not a true jasmine, and despite the name, is not native to the U.S. - it's actually from Southeast Asia. It gets the name "Confederate" from the fact that it grows best in the part of the country that was once the Confederacy. In other parts of the world, it's more commonly known as Star Jasmine.

Whatever the name, the scent is just as sweet, and we love having this bloom signal the true start of spring in My Florida Backyard!

Licorice Kiss

2011-03-31T09:00:00.001-04:00

A recent addition to My Florida Backyard is blooming wonderfully this week. Agastache rupestris, sometimes called licorice mint, has delicately colored blooms in shades of pink, lavender, and apricot.

A. rupestris is native to hot dry regions like Arizona, so it's best suited to sunny, well-drained locations here in Florida. It may struggle in the wettest parts of summer if the soil remains too moist. It's incredibly drought-tolerant once established, so it's especially suited for Florida's spring and fall months where the temperatures are warm and the rains infrequent.

The foliage of this plant, as you might have guessed from the common name, has a licorice scent when crushed. You may notice a resemblance to some types of salvia; in fact, both of these plants are part of the mint family (Lamiaceae). The blooms of A. rupestris are attractive to both butterflies and hummingbirds - in fact, I came around the corner earlier this week to find a monarch nectaring at the blossoms.

Any plant that draws butterflies is A-OK with us, and the added bonus of these beautiful pastel blooms makes Agastache a welcome addition to My Florida Backyard.

Fuzzy Fuzzy Cute Cute

2011-03-29T09:00:00.002-04:00

It's baby duck season again! There are proud and protective mama ducks everywhere, with little lines of babies following behind.

It's a sure sign of spring in My Florida Backyard!

Wish You Well

2011-03-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

On a recent drive back from the other side of the state, we stopped at a nursery in Orlando known for its wide selection of butterfly-friendly flowers. There, we discovered a new salvia hybrid known as "Wendy's Wish", and fell in love immediately.

Wendy's Wish is an "accidental" hybrid. According to Sharon Cohoon, "'Wendy's Wish' was discovered in the garden of Wendy Smith, a Salvia hobbyist, in Victoria, Australia in 2005. Its exact parentage is unknown but Salvia buchananii, Salvia chiapensis, and Salvia `Purple Majesty' were all in the neighborhood so are likely suspects."

We have a bit of a salvia passion in My Florida Backyard. With very few exceptions, they are wonderful for attracting both butterflies and hummingbirds. They are easy to care for, and many of them reseed readily. It seems there are always new varieties to discover, and while they don't all do well in Central Florida, Wendy's Wish should be well suited to thrive here. It's cold hardy to about 25 degrees, and has a long flowering season. Growing experts note that those in hot climates may want to give it a little shade in the hottest part of the day, so we planted ours where it can get some afternoon shade in the summer.

We look forward to seeing how this newly-available species does in our yard. We'll watch it to be sure it doesn't become invasive, and if it can stand the summer heat and humidity. For now, it's obvious that Wendy's Wish loves spring in Central Florida just as much as we do!

Anticipation

2011-03-24T17:23:00.000-04:00

The Confederate Jasmine on the north side of our house is entirely covered in buds right now, and we know in a few days the whole neighborhood will be full of their scent. In fact, My Florida Backyard is full of buds right now, little packages of promise of the colors and fragrance to come.

Confederate Jasmine:

Zinnia:

Gaura lindheimeri:

Salvia farinacea:

Tropical Milkweed:

Yarrow:

Hibiscus:

While the buds may not be as flashy as the blooms, they give such a delicious sense of anticipation that we enjoy them nearly as much as the flowers that will follow.

Sweet Painted Lady

2011-03-21T15:25:00.002-04:00

Having spent most of yesterday getting the gardens in shape for spring, including sprucing up the butterfly garden, it was satisfying to catch a glimpse of this American Painted Lady (Vanessa virginiensis) butterfly stopping by to sip from the lantana today.

"I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden." ~Ruth Stout

Well said, Ms. Stout. Well said indeed.

Spiderwebs

2011-03-18T19:47:00.000-04:00

A foggy morning left everything covered in a layer of dewdrops, including these spiderwebs that are for some reason all over our young cypress tree.

Once again, it's difficult for man to top the beauty nature creates so effortlessly.

One, Two, Three

2011-03-16T20:17:00.000-04:00

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, the latest crop of monarch caterpillars in My Florida Backyard have wriggled their way into shimmering green chrysalises, after eating every single leaf of milkweed available. (Seriously, the plants are completely stripped!) They've chosen all kinds of odd places, including three of them on this fennel plant. Can you spot them all?

Nature creates the most ridiculously beautiful things, don't you think?

Happy St. Patrick's Day - don't forget to follow the monarchs' example of the Wearing of the Green!

Orange Crush

2011-03-13T21:01:00.000-04:00

We here at My Florida Backyard have been out of town for the past few days, and we arrived home to find the most wonderful welcome in the front yard - the hippeastrum is blooming!

Hippeastrum is more commonly, but incorrectly, known as amaryllis. Hippeastrum is in fact a genus in the family Amaryllidaceae, but it's a different genus from the actual amaryllis, which is native to South Africa and commonly known as belladonna lily. All of the "amaryllis" bulbs and plants sold for indoor and outdoor use are actually Hippeastrum. An easy way to tell the difference is that true amaryllis has no leaves - the stalk grows straight up from the ground (see this picture for an example).

Given the unbelievably striking flowers, the actual scientific name probably doesn't matter much to most of us. One of the great things about living in Florida is that we can plant our amaryllis/hippeastrum bulbs outdoors and allow them to multiply. And multiply they will - all of our bulbs came from the garden of a friend, where a dozen plants have turned into hundreds over the years.

The multi-bloomed stalks started to push up a couple of weeks ago. The blooms themselves will last only a week or so, after which we'll let them die back naturally to feed the bulbs below. The rest of the year, the thick green leaves at the base form a nice foliage background for other blooms under the tree. We planted these hippeastrum only last fall, so in a few years, we expect the greenery to fill in nicely.

For a few weeks each spring, though, it will be the brilliant orange blooms that make the front yard of My Florida Backyard the showiest place on the block. We hope to add some other colors of hippeastrum in years to come, but right now, we're pretty happy with blooms we've got.

Flax in Bloom

2011-03-10T08:30:00.000-05:00

If you keep seeing waves of purple amongst the grass at the side of the road, you're seeing one of our favorite Florida spring wildflowers, Blue Toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis syn. Linaria canadensis).

It's native to much of the eastern U.S., including Florida, and has been introduced to the western states. It's a great harbinger of spring in Florida, as it blooms when the weather has finally become consistently warm and sunny, generally starting in late February. Though the common name is "Blue Toadflax", it's our opinion that it really looks more purple, although maybe not in these pictures.

There's nothing showy about blue toadflax, although in large amounts it's very eye-catching. This native wildflower (also sometimes called Canada Toadflax) is in the same genus as the Linaria Enchantment we started from seed this year, and they have the same narrow delicate stems supporting little groupings of flowers.

Blue Toadflax is a host plant for the Buckeye butterfly's caterpillar, which is starting to pop up all over the place. Buckeyes are mainly a spring butterfly in Florida; they'll start to make their way north when the temperatures start to heat up and their host plants die back. Toadflax will last for only a few weeks this spring, so we're glad to be able to enjoy it in My Florida Backyard while it's here!

Flea Hop

2011-03-06T08:30:00.000-05:00

Spring wildflowers are starting to pop up all over the place, and one that keeps catching my eye along roadsides and here in My Florida Backyard is this cheerful little bloom that looks like a cross between a daisy and an aster:

I turned to my Wildflowers of Florida Field Guide and found this wildflower on pages 196-197. It's Oakleaf Fleabane (Erigeron quercifolius), also sometimes called Southern Fleabane. It's in the aster family (Asteraceae), and is one of eight species of fleabane native to Florida. It flowers from March through September in Central Florida, so the appearance of these blooms is right on time.

There are hundreds of kinds of fleabane around the world. Its name comes from the supposed ability of this plant to repel fleas, and the plant was used in herbal medicine in the past to treat dysentery, among other things. While we don't plan to use it for illness, we're glad to have this happy little flower helping us welcome spring in My Florida Backyard.

Open Invitation

2011-03-02T22:26:00.001-05:00

I'd like to invite our My Florida Backyard readers to visit the new Birds & Blooms Blog, where yours truly is serving as the Southeast Regional Reporter.

This blog is a new venture of Birds & Blooms magazine. I've been writing the regional report for the Southeast for this magazine since last summer, and I'm pleased to be writing posts now for the newly-launched blog. The goal is to provide detailed tips on birding and gardening in specific regions around the U.S. The Southeast region is fairly large, ranging from West Virgina to Florida and west to Louisiana, so it provides a new and interesting challenge for me as a writer, meeting the needs of such a wide group of people.

Regular weekly features will include Focus on Natives (weekends), which will take a look at the flora and fauna that make the Southeast so special; Places to Go, Things to Do (Tuesdays), a look at upcoming events or sites worth a visit; and Working for the Weekend (Thursdays), which will provide project ideas and help with chores for the weekend ahead. I'll also be answering reader questions and posting items of general interest.

Won't you come and join me, and tell your friends as well? This blog has something for gardeners and birders across the country, so spread the word to those who might be interested.

P.S. Don't worry... My Florida Backyard will continue just as it always has, focusing on the wildlife activities in our own little suburban Central Florida lot, with pictures, information, and tips along the way.

Contain It

2011-02-28T21:34:00.000-05:00

March has come in with absolutely no sign of a lion in My Florida Backyard - the last few weeks have been day after day of sunshine and warm temperatures, and today is no exception. Spring is here in Central Florida, no matter what the calendar says, and the two newly-planted containers flanking our garden bench are bursting with spring colors and blooms.

How amazing is this white and peach trailing verbena? We can't wait for it to grow a bit more and begin spilling over the sides. This kind of verbena is a little hit-or-miss in Florida's hot summer heat, but these pots get morning sun and dappled shade in the afternoon, so maybe we'll be able to keep these around for awhile.

The purple angelonia (Angelonia angustifolia), on the other hand, will do just fine in the summer heat. It should flower all summer long, if we keep the dead stalks cut back to encourage new blooms.

Our backyard bench is the perfect spot for sitting in the afternoon sun and watching ducks on the water or wading birds on the shore, and having a few cheerful blooms on either side makes it an even more pleasant place for welcoming spring to My Florida Backyard.

Snowbird

2011-02-27T17:42:00.000-05:00

We're "transplants" from up north here in My Florida Backyard, and very happy ones at that. Anytime anyone from up north asks us if we don't "miss how beautiful the snow is", we just laugh and laugh and laugh. The only thing we miss about snow is snow days, and since adults rarely get to enjoy those, we'd be just fine without experiencing snow ever again.

Snow peas, on the other hand, are very welcome in My Florida Backyard's little raised vegetable garden. This is the first year we've tried growing any food for humans - we've always focused on food for wildlife in the past - and we picked some fairly easy vegetables to get started. Peas are a cool-season vegetable, so we started ours about five weeks ago in mid-January. We choose a dwarf variety from Burpee called Snowbird, since there's not much room for unruly plants in the raised bed. They're just starting to flower now, and we have a feeling we may enjoy these beautiful blooms even more than the pea pods that will follow!

It almost seems a shame that these delicate little blooms will have to fall off so the peas can start to form. We'll enjoy them while they're here though, as the only kind of snow we ever really need in My Florida Backyard.

Seeds Grow to Plants

2011-02-23T20:06:00.000-05:00

Last fall, we bought a few packets of inexpensive seeds and, rather than starting them carefully in little containers and babying them along, we decided to sort of "Hail Mary" it - fling the seeds into the garden and let the sun and rain do their jobs.

We're starting to see a few results now, starting with this first brave little cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) bloom that's so cheery in the butterfly garden right now. We're hoping to see lots of of little guys popping up to join it soon.

Nearby, we planted a row of Linaria Enchantment, which we bought from Park Seed. They sort of remind us of snapdragons, though they're smaller, and the color and detail of the blooms is amazing.

These have been blooming continuously for the last month or so, after being sown late last fall. Linaria is also known as Toadflax, which is generally a cool season flower. These withstood frost very well last month, although they're in a pretty sheltered location near the house so that may have helped. We fully expect these to die back in the hotter summer months, but hope that they'll re-seed and return next fall and winter.

Successes like these give us the encouragement we need to keep trying new seeds. Right now, we have a couple of seedling trays of zinnia, marigold, and several others getting ready for the summer season, and a few packets of coreopsis to broad-sow when the summer rains begin.

"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders." - Henry David Thoreau

Duck and Dive

2011-02-20T21:06:00.000-05:00

Winter months bring a variety of seasonal residents to My Florida Backyard, including several varieties of diving ducks. In the fall, we had large numbers of Ring-Necked Ducks, but more recently, large flocks of Lesser Scaup have congregated in the lake out back.

The Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis) is one of the most numerous diving ducks in North America. It is closely related to and difficult to tell apart from the Greater Scaup (A. marila), but the Greater Scaup is much less likely to be seen in this area, and is generally found on salt water. So our visitors are certainly Lesser Scaup (the plural of scaup is scaup, by the way).

Males (shown above, left) have more striking plumage, as is often is in the bird world, but both male and females have the bright blue bills that give this species the common name Bluebill. When the ducks first arrived in early winter, males had much duller plumage, and females had smaller sections of white near their bills. As mating season draws closer, the male's black and white feathers have become clearer and more defined, while the female's white bill patches have grown.

Lesser Scaup are noted for their interesting head shape, which almost seems to be squared off at times. At other times, though, their heads are more rounded. What explains this change in shape? It turns out that when a duck is relaxed, just paddling around and enjoying the sun, its head naturally takes on the squarer shape. When they tense up and prepare to dive, the head becomes more rounded, possibly making them more streamlined for the trip to the bottom of the pond. In the series of pictures below, compare the duck in the middle with the duck on the right to see this in action.

Lesser Scaup do not breed in Florida - they'll head north for the summer to breed there. Since we can see they are taking on the brighter plumage in preparation for mating, we can also expect them to begin their northern journey pretty soon. As spring approaches, they'll be off up the Mississippi Flyway to Northwest Canada, gone for another year. We'll look forward to seeing them again the in fall, when they bring their new offspring to enjoy the warmth of winter in My Florida Backyard.

My Pretty Little Pink

2011-02-16T21:17:00.001-05:00

With forecast temperatures in the 70s for the foreseeable future, winter seems to be about over in My Florida Backyard, and we're starting to make plans for spring in the garden. As we walked the yard this weekend looking for plants that need to be replaced, we couldn't help but admire those that not only survived the winter, but actually thrived, like these dianthus.

Many of today's popular dianthus species trace their heritage back to the mountains of southern Europe, so it's no surprise that they're a cold-hardy genus. Here in Florida, they generally survive frosts and even a hard freeze or two, and just keep blooming. Although some gardening sites say they are not suitable for warmer climates, our dianthus continue to flower well right through the summer, so perhaps newer hybrids and varieties are better suited to heat as well as cooler temperatures.

Dianthus has a variety of common names, including Sweet William and Pinks. While most dianthus are in fact pink in color, the common name "pinks" actually comes from the distinctive fringed edge of the flower petals. As far back as the 1300s, to "pink" something meant to decorate it with a frilled or fringed edge (think pinking shears). Its been speculated that the color pink actually takes its name from the flower.

Pinks are a biennial, so if you start them from seed you'll have to wait two years for them to bloom. However, they're readily available at all nurseries in a variety of patterns and hues, and once planted, they continue to bloom and thrive for years. Though not a native, this low-maintenance plant is an easy pop of color any Florida gardener can appreciate, as we do in My Florida Backyard.

Love is a Rose

2011-02-14T18:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day from My Florida Backyard!

The red rose whispers of passion,

And the white rose breathes of love;

O, the red rose is a falcon,

And the white rose is a dove.

-John Boyle O'Reilly

Dixie Blossom

2011-02-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

Plants are slowly springing back into life in My Florida Backyard, and we recently noticed the airy blooms of white gaura hovering above the butterfly garden. White Gaura (Gaura lindheimeri) actually comes in several colors - we had a great hot pink cultivar last year that we're hoping will come back this year - and is native to Texas and Louisiana, but does well throughout the Southeast.

Gaura, sometimes called beeblossom, is a genus of plants native to North America. Florida has its own native gaura, Gaura angustifolia, commonly known as Southern Beeblossom. It's fairly common in the wild, though somewhat easy to overlook. It spreads by underground rhizome, so you'll often find a pretty large patch of these growing together in dappled shade in the woodlands. The plant is similar to White Gaura, but the flowers are smaller and even less showier. The various Gaura species also hybridize easily, so even experts have difficulty telling them apart from time to time.

Gaura lindheimeri is readily available at nurseries throughout Florida at certain times of the year, in shades ranging from white through brilliant pink. Some have been bred to be shorter and more compact - in its natural state, it's tall and somewhat sparse. Choose the cultivar that works best for you and add some to your yard to draw pollinators and butterflies.

Brighten the Corner Where You Are

2011-02-08T09:00:00.005-05:00

The house next to My Florida Backyard is vacant and no one is taking care of the yard, so it's a little haven for wildflowers and even interesting weeds these days. In a corner on the north side of the house, these cheery little yellow flowers have taken over in recent weeks.

We consulted the always-handy Wildflowers of Florida Field Guide and found our answer on pages 302-303: Oriental False Hawksbeard (Youngia japonica). As the species name would indicate, this is a non-native from Asia which has naturalized around the globe in the tropics and semi-tropics.

Gardeners often say that a weed is just a flower growing where it isn't wanted, but it seems no one has any love for hawksbeard. It's one of the most common pests encountered by those attempting to cultivate a nice green lawn in Florida (good luck with that, folks), and can be hard to get rid of; there's evidence of this plant beginning to show herbicide resistance in its native Japan. It doesn't seem to be bothered by frosts in our area, and the dandelion-like seeds spread quickly by wind from the multiple flower heads.

This plant is an annual with a shallow taproot, so if you find it growing where you don't want it, it's best to simply remove it by hand. If the heads have gone to seed, you can avoid spreading the seeds by snipping off the seed heads first and carefully placing them in your yard waste. Check the area in a week or two to see if new plants have sprouted from seed heads you missed, and remove them the same way.

On the plus side, this plant is seldom found in the wild and it doesn't appear to have a disrupting effect on native plants, so it's not considered a harmful invasive. It's mostly just a nuisance for those concerned with the perfect lawn (something My Florida Backyard will certainly never be). The rest of us will just live with it, maybe even enjoying the glimpse of happy yellow it adds to the landscape around us.

Solitary Man

2011-02-06T17:21:00.001-05:00

On a routine trip around the yard to see what's been going on, we stumbled across this monarch butterfly clinging to some passionvine. His fairly sluggish movements and nearly perfect wings led us to believe he was probably newly emerged from chrysalis, hanging out for awhile before going off to find a first meal.

Butterflies are not nearly as common in My Florida Backyard during the winter months, but when we do come across them, they're always a welcome sight. In fact, photographing butterflies can be a lot easier in the winter, because the cooler temperatures mean you can often find them just basking in the sunlight, building up the energy to fly. This offers great opportunities to get up close; all of these shots were taken without a zoom lens. On a cloudy, cooler day, butterflies just don't have the get-up-and-go to get up and go.

When this monarch dropped to the ground and opened his wings, we could see he was a male by the black scent gland spots on his lower hindwings. In their fairly short life span (usually just weeks), butterflies have just two purposes: to eat and to mate. Unlike in summertime, when the gardens are full of prospective mates, this monarch may have to work a little harder to find some lady friends. They're out there though - we saw a female feeding from the milkweed just a few days ago.

Photographing butterflies can be a challenge, but winter days offer a chance to polish your skills. You don't need a super fancy camera to get decent shots, if you're patient. (Ours is only a high-end point and shoot model.) If your camera has a macro setting, be sure to use it. A setting that allows you to take multiple shots with one button click is good too. Get as close as possible before using your zoom lens for the best quality. And don't be afraid to use a photo editing program like Picasa to crop your pictures and do some minor editing to show the butterflies to best advantage.

Have you had any butterfly sightings in your own yards? With the arrival of spring, watch for buckeyes, red admirals, and whites to appear - we've already seen a few. Soon, this solitary monarch will have more company in the butterfly garden. In the meantime, he's a welcome bright splash of color on an otherwise quiet gray day in My Florida Backyard.

Ring Out, Wild Bells

2011-02-03T16:08:00.001-05:00

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light..."

Tennyson began his famous poem this way, and perhaps it seems odd that these lines turn my thoughts to Coral Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens). But bear with me a moment - this Florida native wildflower is one that thrives in the cooler winter weather, and from the living room window, we often see the vibrant bells outlined against a grey sky on a cool evening, or whipping in the wind on wild afternoon. Though it does well all year in Florida, Coral Honeysuckle seems to love the unpredictable ups and downs of winter.

Honeysuckles are well-known and well-loved the world over. Most people associate them with fragrant summer nights or lazy afternoons, their sweet smell accompanied by the buzzing of bees and flutter of hummingbird wings. These dreamy visions are generally inspired by the honeysuckles of Europe (Lonicera periclymenum) or Asia (Lonicera japonica), though, as L. sempervirens doesn't have much of a fragrance. This hardy evergreen bloomer seems wilder and simpler than its foreign cousins, more suited to life in the New World.

Unlike the invasive Japanese Honeysuckle, Coral Honeysuckle is friendly to Florida gardeners. It's happy to climb up a fence or clamber over a trellis, but it doesn't wander and it's easy to control. It doesn't climb using tendrils or suckers, so it won't drown out other plants and shrubs nearby. We grow ours to hide some downspouts in the butterfly garden. It does well in full or partial sun, and handles droughts, heat waves, frosts, and pretty much all other weather without blinking an eye.

Don't let its lack of obvious fragrance fool you - Coral Honeysuckle is a natural in the butterfly garden. The few hummingbirds we've spotted in My Florida Backyard have been seen feeding from this plant or a nearby firebush (Hamelia patens). The foliage is said to be a host plant for Leopard Moth caterpillars, among others. The blooms themselves are simple but lovely... brilliant red outside with a surprising splash of yellow on the inside.

Coral Honeysuckle is readily available at native plant nurseries. Avoid the non-native honeysuckles you see for sale at big-box stores and instead seek out this wonderful native, which seems to have the "sweeter manners" of which Tennyson wrote. As the poet himself said, "Ring out the false, ring in the true."

Birdland

2011-01-30T18:54:00.001-05:00

When we opened the back door this morning, the sounds of this very vocal American Crow perched in the tree nearby called us out for a closer look. Rather than the usual obnoxious "caw caw", these calls were a bit more melodic, mixing rattles and coos in an intriguing and unexpected manner.

We quickly realized it was a very bird-filled morning in My Florida Backyard. Within a matter of minutes, both a Red-Bellied Woodpecker and a Downy Woodpecker had dropped in for Sunday brunch as well.

Little Yellow-Rumped Warblers searched the grass nearby for seeds and small insects, their excellent camouflage rendering them nearly invisible except when they hopped to a new location.

Not to be outdone, wading birds made an appearance as well, including these Great Egrets.

Nearby, a limpkin sat on the bank, soaking up the winter sunshine.

All in all, it was a very bird-filled day in My Florida Backyard, as it often is in the winter months. We sat in the warm sun, enjoying the show and loving life in Florida in January!

Life is for Learning

2011-01-28T11:00:00.003-05:00

We've noticed that we've been pretty lean on posts during the month of January here in My Florida Backyard. More rainfall and lower temperatures than usual has made it a little challenging to find new and exciting things to tell you about recently. While we scour the yard for some interesting topics, I thought you might be interested in a guest post I recently did for the MOSI BioWorks blog, Tales From the Butterfly Garden. It's a little more detailed than our posts here on My Florida Backyard sometimes are, but hopefully you'll find some of the information useful or interesting.

Preparing for Caterpillar Season: Milkweed
Originally published on Tales From the Butterfly Garden

During the chilly winter months in Florida, days can go by without a butterfly sighting, but it only takes a few warm days to bring them out again. In a few weeks, they'll be back in full force, making now the perfect time to prepare your garden to support butterfly and caterpillar populations for the year ahead.

Butterfly enthusiasts know that milkweed is the larval host plant for butterflies in the subfamily Danainae, which includes Monarchs and Queens. In Florida, the most common milkweed available for sale is Asclepias curassavica, known commonly as Tropical Milkweed or Scarlet Milkweed. This species of milkweed is not actually native to Florida, but has naturalized here due to its ability to thrive in our hot and sticky summers. Being a tropical plant, it is not cold-hardy, though it will frequently come back from the roots if you're patient. It also reseeds readily, and also grows easily from stem cuttings allowed to root in water.

Florida also has several dozen native species of milkweed, most found only in the wild and some in very localized populations. Of these native species, the only one commonly found for sale is Asclepias tuberosa, commonly called Butterflyweed. By scouring the internet, I've gathered information on twelve other native species, and found seed sources for three of them. The list below shows botanical name, common name(s), and some general information. Craig Huegel has done a great job documenting many of these species in detail on his Native Florida Wildflowers blog, so for further information and pictures, click the botanical name to be redirected to his blog (or, in a few cases, www.wildflower.org).

Asclepias connivens - Large Flower Milkweed

Occurs throughout Florida in open wet flatwoods and savannahs, in widely scattered and localized populations
Requires open and seasonally wet conditions to thrive

Asclepias curtisii - Curtiss' Milkweed

Extremely rare endemic and endangered species, with localized populations
Confined to sunny and very well-drained sandy habitats in the peninsula

Asclepias feayi - Florida Milkweed

Endemic to Florida and found only within the southern half of the state
Native to well-drained upland habitats, especially xeric flatwoods and sandhills with high levels of sunlight

Asclepias humistra - Purple Milkweed

Native to the northern two-thirds of Florida
Prefers well-drained sands and full sun; will rot quickly if planted in moist soils

Asclepias incarnata - Swamp Rose Milkweed

Native throughout peninsular Florida
Prefers moist to wet soil habitats in sunny locations, but can tolerate occasional drought once established
Huegel notes this species is difficult to cultivate from seed, although seeds are readily available in many seed catalogs. In addition to seed, Prairie Moon Nursery offers both bare root and potted plants for sale via mail order.

Asclepias lanceolata - Fewflower Milkweed

Tall thin species with very thin leaves and small heads of bright orange blooms
Occurs throughout Florida in open marshes, wet prairies, and savannahs

Asclepias longifolia - Longleaf Milkweed

Found throughout Florida in pinelands and savannahs with sunny, moist soils
Easy to grow from seed, though no commercial seed source appears to be available

Asclepias pedicellata - Savannah Milkweed

Occurs statewide in open upland habitats, such as pine flatwoods and prairie
Prefers average conditions during much of the year and moist soils during the summer rainy season

Asclepias perennis - Swamp Milkweed, Aquatic Milkweed, White Milkweed

Occurs in a variety of wetland habitats, including semi-shaded forests
Requires good soil moisture to prosper; has some drought tolerance but must be provided plenty of water during the summer months

Ascplepias tomentosa - Velvetleaf Milkweed

Occurs in a variety of well-drained upland sites throughout most of Florida
A good candidate for gardeners looking to use native milkweeds in a butterfly garden

Asclepias verticillata - Whorled Milkweed

A drought-tolerant species that thrives in sun or part shade
Seeds available from Prairie Moon Nursery via mail order

Asclepias viridis - Green Antelopehorn, Spider Milkweed

This species prefers moist soils and full sun
Seeds available from Prairie Moon Nursery via mail order

For butterfly lovers in Florida and other states, MonarchWatch.org is a great source of information on milkweed around the country. Here you'll find an in-progress guide to milkweed species, along with detailed growing information. Many milkweeds are surprisingly hard to start from seed, requiring scarification and/or stratification to germinate, and this site provides instructions for both. They also offer a Milkweed Seed Kit for sale that provides four kinds of milkweed seeds, three of which should grow well in Florida.

In a butterfly garden, you can never have too much milkweed. A hungry caterpillar can strip a plant of leaves in just a few days, so plant all the milkweed you can handle to support a healthy butterfly population in your area. You can start now from seeds, or watch your local nurseries for milkweed plants in the months ahead. A patch of milkweed is almost guaranteed to be a butterfly magnet - if you plant it, and they will come!

If you know of a source for seeds or plants of any of Florida's native milkweed species, we'd love to hear about it. Please tell us in the comments.

Hometown Pride

2011-01-21T18:31:00.000-05:00

This last week was was a great one for Florida gardeners. We had several days of rain, with lots of warm sunshine in between, making it the perfect time for planting new flowers to brighten up the winter landscape. As we scoured nearby nurseries for the best and brightest bargains, we made a wonderful discovery - the Tampa Mock Vervain (Glandularia tampensis) is in at Home Depot!

It’s certainly not every city that can boast a wildflower named for it, but Tampa has one. The Tampa Mock Vervain is an endangered native wildflower, endemic to just a few coastal counties in central Florida. Like so many native species in Florida, Tampa Mock Vervain is threatened by development. It prefers open woodlands near the coast – just like developers do. Once development began to destroy its limited natural habitat, it didn’t have much of a chance, and there are now only 24 known populations in the wild.

Butterfly gardeners treasure Tampa Mock Vervain as a fantastic nectar source. Plant it now to enjoy it throughout winter and spring, but expect it to die back once the harsh heat of summer hits. Some gardeners have luck with this plant re-seeding itself, but we never have. Fortunately for us, Riverview Flower Farm supplies our local Home Depot with this plant each winter, and we stock up when we find them. Many Florida native plant nurseries carry this plant as well, so keep your eyes open. One caveat - don't collect this plant if you happen across it in the wild; that's illegal due to its endangered status.

Florida’s ecosystem has been changed forever by development, but you can restore some of the native health and beauty by taking simple steps. Add Tampa Mock Vervain to your gardens to help bring “Old Florida” back to life - and bring in butterflies by the barrelful!

To Everything, There is a Season

2011-01-17T19:30:00.001-05:00

Any butterfly gardener knows that milkweed is one of the most important plants in any butterfly garden. We often refer to it as the "all-in-one butterfly plant", because it provides food for monarch butterflies (and several others) throughout their entire life cycle. This subfamily of butterflies (Danainae) lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves so the caterpillars are in the perfect place to start feeding when they hatch. After metamorphosis, the adult butterflies sip the nectar from the flowers.

There are a multitude of milkweed species native to Florida, but (not surprisingly) most are difficult to find, even at native plant nurseries. The two most readily available are Scarlet Milkweed (Asclepias curassavica), which is actually not native but does very well here during hot and humid summers, and Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa), which is perfect for the cool season.

A. tuberosa can take a light frost with minimal damage, and thrives in moderate temperatures. It's available in both yellow and orange flowered varieties, and both are great for monarchs, queens, and other milkweed butterflies.

Monarchs do live year-round in Central Florida. Unlike northern populations, the Florida population does not migrate to Mexico, so butterfly gardeners should strive to provide them with host and nectar plants all throughout the year. At this time of year, you may not see many butterflies, but on warm afternoons they can still be found where the right plants are available, and the right plant right now is A. tuberosa.

If you can't find plants, A. tuberosa is pretty easy to start from seed, which you should be able to find most places seeds are sold. We bought a couple of packets of the orange-flowered variety from Burpee at Home Depot last week for $1 each. This is also a good time to start seeds for other varieties of milkweed - many of the native varieties are available online from native plant catalogs like Prairie Moon. We're thinking of trying Swamp Milkweed (A. incarnata) and Whorled Milkweed (A. verticillata) this year, just for variety. We'll let you know if we succeed!

How Sweet It Is

2011-01-12T19:49:00.000-05:00

Cooler winter weather allows Floridians to welcome a variety of annuals to their yards that just can't take the heat of summer. One of our favorites is Sweet Alyssum (Lobularia maritima), also sometimes called Sweet Allison. It's low-growing with tiny flowers that are attractive to bees and butterflies, not that we've seen too many of the latter lately.

Sweet Alyssum is not native to Florida, but it's pretty easy to find at most nurseries.You'll generally find Sweet Alyssum available in white, but other colors are available. The MOSI Butterfly Garden recently planted a border of purple alyssum along the front walk, and Park Seed offers a variety called Pastel Carpet, which is a mix of pinks and yellows.

In yet another example of why it's best to be familiar with botanical names, Sweet Alyssum is strangely enough not actually a member of the genus Alyssum, although it once was. Neither is another plant commonly known as Alyssum 'Compacta' and even sold on Park Seed's website by this name. This yellow version is actually correctly called Aurinia saxatilis, and is popular for rock gardens. Both Aurinia and Lobularia are closely related to Alyssum and used to be included in it, but that's no longer the case. The lesson? If you're looking for a specific plant, check botanical names to be sure you're actually getting the plant you were hoping for.

At any rate, Sweet Alyssum is great for Florida winters, and should last all the way until the strong heat of summer arrives. When the butterflies return, they'll find these delicate little flowers waiting for them. Until then, we'll enjoy the honey-sweet scent ourselves!

I'll Buy That Dream

2011-01-08T00:30:00.001-05:00

I have fond memories as a kid of getting the Sears Christmas Wish Book every year in late fall - it had page after page of the toys and games that would soon find their way onto our lists for Santa. My brother and I would pore over the catalog, separately and apart, revisiting our favorite choices over and over until the pages were worn. The dream of what we might get was almost better than the delight of Christmas morning.

As an adult gardener, I find the same delight each winter as the spring seed catalogs begin pouring in. Page after page of blooms and vegetables and fruits, new pleasures and old favorites, bright colors and promised fragrances... I keep them by my chair on dark winter evenings and pore through them page by page. I dog-ear the pages, compare options between catalogs, and dream dream dream about bringing all that color and life from the pages of the catalogs into My Florida Backyard. The catalogs are free, but the pleasure they provide is priceless when winter nights seem long.

I don't always have a lot of luck starting plants from seeds, but every year I allow myself a budget and, after much careful research, give some seeds a try. As a Florida gardener, I know that many of the blooms offered in the catalogs might not grow here, so I spend time on sites like Dave's Garden finding out if others in similar areas have raised this plant successfully. I check the FLEPPC's list of Invasive Species to be sure I don't accidentally introduce something into the ecosystem that could do more harm than good. I decide if there's really a place for each plant in My Florida Backyard, and determine the potential wildlife value - when you have a fraction of an acre, every square foot counts.

Then I make my lists. I visit each catalog's website, and fill my shopping cart with every seed that made it through the research phase. Then, I start making the hard decisions; if I bought every seed that caught my eye, I'd spend hundreds of dollars and couldn't possibly accommodate all the plants. So I winnow the lists down, slowly, over days, until my mind is made up. And then... I click "Buy" and wait for my little packets of dreams to arrive in the mail.

Here are just five of the seeds that are catching my eye this year, and the catalog offering them (pictures come from those catalogs websites). We here in My Florida Backyard would love to hear about your own experiences with any of these, especially from those living in zone 9a or 9b.

Gaillardia, Punch Bowl Hybrid (Burpee)

We have tons of luck each spring with perennial Gaillardia pulchella, also known as Indian Blanket or Blanketflower. We threw down a packet of seeds a few years ago, and they come back over and over and over again. This makes us hopeful that this lovely pink variety might also thrive. These seeds are a little pricey at $4.95 for a packet of 100, but if they thrive year after year like the gaillardia we have now, they'd be cheap at twice the price.

Marigold, Snowball Hybrid (Burpee)

We're not really crazy about marigolds in general, but something about this white variety is really striking, and marigolds are pretty easy to start from seed. Marigolds tend to hold up pretty well to even Florida's brutal heat, so we could definitely see these finding a home in our low-maintenance front yard. On the other hand, these are another fairly expensive (for seed) option - $5.50 for 50 seeds, and marigolds are definitely an annual, so this wouldn't be something we'd get benefit from in the future.

Vinca, First Kiss Blueberry (Park Seed)

Vinca (also called periwinkle) grows easily from seed. We love the white and pink shades, and this new purple hue is really wonderful. Vinca withstands heat and while it may die back in a frost, it often comes back from the roots in My Florida Backyard. At $2.25 for a packet of 50, this is a great investment, as we'd expect to find these in the garden for years to come.

Salvia farinacea, Fairy Queen (Park Seed)

Salvia is incredibly popular in our butterfly garden, and perennial S. farinacea is one of our favorites. It survives crushing heat and a frost or two, coming back year after year, and the blooms are a constant draw for butterflies. This variety is a bi-color mix of blue and white, and at $2.25 per packet, seems a good value.

Monarda Bergamo (Park Seed)

When we were in Ohio last summer, we saw a patch of monarda (bee balm) absolutely covered with Hummingbird Clearwing Moths, and it made us want some for our own yard. However, most monarda varieties struggle with Florida's steamy summers, being very susceptible to mildew. (The exception is our native Monarda punctata.) "Bergamo" claims to be mildew-resistant, and a packet of 50 seeds is only $1.95, so it seems worth a try.

There are plenty of other seeds that are on our radar for 2011, so we'll see what happens when we finally place those seed orders. What seed catalogs do you love? Tell us, so we can get them and find out what we're missing!

Diner

2011-01-04T20:41:00.001-05:00

One of My Florida's Backyard favorite Christmas gifts is finally up and ready for visitors... our new bird feeder!

We've been on the quest for the perfect feeder for a long time. We've tried a variety of options, and found that a platform feeder filled with safflower seed seemed to draw lots of birds without squirrel interference (squirrels don't like safflower, for some reason). However, there was a problem... the open feeder was an invitation for muscovy ducks to perch and hoover up all the seed in one sitting. We needed a fly-through feeder, which is essentially a platform feeder with a roof, but it needed to be well-designed - the ducks are very persistent.

The male and female cardinals have been our most frequent visitors so far. It takes birds a little time to get used to a new feeder, sort of like when a new restaurant opens. Our feeder is in the same place as the old one, so the birds know its there. They just need to build up a little trust so they know they're safe when they feed there.

This feeder has so many great features - the roof protects both the seed and visiting birds from the weather. The screen bottom is designed to slide out for easy cleaning. The arch supports allow easy access for smaller birds, but keep out larger birds that often feed in flocks, like mourning doves. It's built of cedar, so it will withstand the weather while turning a nice silvery-grey color. And best of all... it's definitely duck-proof!

The roof is high enough that perching ducks can't get to the seed, no matter how much they stretch their necks, but it slopes down so it's low enough at the sides that the ducks can't get inside to feed that way. Our seed is safe from duck invasions! (I can't help feeling like the cardinals are laughing...)

So My Florida Backyard is sending out a big "THANK YOU!" to Father Christmas (and we mean that very literally - thanks, Dad!) for designing and building us the perfect feeder. We're looking forward to seeing what kind of winged visitors will drop by the feeder this winter!

It's Just Another New Year's Eve

2010-12-31T23:59:00.000-05:00

My Florida Backyard celebrates by watching fireworks in every direction...

Thanks for dropping by throughout 2010... we look forward to seeing you in 2011!

Dewdrops in the Garden

2010-12-29T19:15:00.000-05:00

My Florida Backyard suffered a pretty hard freeze this week, and the gardens took some fairly serious damage. Fortunately, before the freeze, we happened to get some pictures of the Duranta erecta, often called Golden Dewdrop.

This is a very common shrub in warmer regions. It's native to Central America, but does not seem to be invasive in Florida (unlike places like Australia and Hawaii, where it's considered a noxious pest). It's very easy to find at nurseries all over the state, often under the cultivar name "Gold Mound" or "Cuban Gold".

Duranta has a lot of value for the wildlife gardener. Like most shrubs, it provides shelter and cover for smaller animals. The shrub frequently has both flowers and berries at the same time. The light blue flowers are a draw for butterflies, and they're followed by orange berries enjoyed by songbirds. (Note that these berries are toxic, and children and small animals have been killed by eating them, so you may want to avoid planting this in areas where kids or dogs play.)

Duranta can grow up to 20 feet tall and wide, but you can easily keep it under control with vigorous pruning. It generally sustains damage during a heavy frost, so we take advantage of that time to prune it back, sometimes by as much as half. This allows it to grow back more fully and compactly, perfect for the small butterfly garden where it's located. We just completed that annual pruning in My Florida Backyard, as a result of the freeze, so we're glad we grabbed these pictures to share with you before the dramatic haircut!

White Christmas

2010-12-25T06:00:00.002-05:00

There's no snow in My Florida Backyard this Christmas (thank goodness!), but that doesn't mean we're not having a White Christmas...

Merry Christmas from our backyard to yours!

Holly Leaves and Christmas Trees

2010-12-24T08:00:00.001-05:00

Just in time for Christmas, the holly berries in My Florida Backyard are starting to turn red. Our holly is one of the few plants on the property that was here before we were - it's located on the west side of the house in front of a bedroom window. We feel reasonably sure it is a Burford Holly (Ilex cornuta 'Burfordii'), which is native to Asia. Fortunately, it's not considered invasive in Florida, so we were able to leave this 15-foot shrub in place without any guilt.

Florida has several really great native hollies, including Dahoon Holly (Ilex cassine) and Yaupon Holly, which has the superb Latin name Ilex vomitoria. Given the choice, we would have planted either of these natives instead of the non-native Burford, but beggars can't be choosers. Our holly berries are popular with mockingbirds in the neighborhood - several years ago a male became very territorial in this bush and even began attacking his own reflection in the nearby window to protect his food source. Interestingly, it appears that holly berries actually benefit from cold - they apparently soften and become milder in flavor after a few freezes, making them even more delectable to birds.

Oh, and just for fun, here's a picture of the little live tree we have on the porch in My Florida Backyard. The big (fake) tree is inside, but we just can't resist having a live tree to smell and enjoy during the holidays!

Everything's Coming Up Roses

2010-12-23T16:16:00.000-05:00

Wow, the Knockout Rose by our front door is happy! Although Knockouts can withstand the heat of a Florida summer, they're much happier when the cooler weather sets in. We gave ours a shot of fertilizer a few weeks ago and covered it during the freeze last week to protect the buds, and it's really paying off!

Oh, and the bees are enjoying it too...

Roses in winter... just one more reason we here in My Florida Backyard couldn't imagine living anywhere else!